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International audience; A longstanding research divide exists in plant ecology: either focusing on plant clonality, with no ambition to address nonclonal plants, or focusing on all plants, ignoring that many ecological processes can be affected by the fact that some plants are clonal while others are not. This gap cascades into a lack of distinction and knowledge about the similarities and differences between clonal and nonclonal plants. Here we aim to bridge this gap by identifying areas that would benefit from the incorporation of clonal growth into one integrated research platform: namely, response to productivity and disturbance, biotic interactions, and population dynamics. We are convinced that this will provide a roadmap to gain valuable insights into the ecoevolutionary dynamics relevant to all plants.

Plant belowground storage traits are important for mediating environmental stress, but their role in response to water availability and their coordination with above-ground traits is largely unknown. We predicted a coordination of conservative above- and belowground traits and preferential storage of water-soluble carbohydrates in the drier grassland and acquisitive traits and preferential storage of starch in the wetter grassland. We examined the relationship between plant preference/response for water availability (habitat preference, intrinsic water use efficiency, and leaf relative water content deficit) and the traits of belowground storage organs (morphological, anatomical, and storage carbohydrate concentration) in 37 perennial herbs from a wet and a dry temperate grassland in the Czech Republic. Species from the dry grassland preferred lower moisture, had greater water use efficiency than those from the wet grassland, and were also more conservative in their morphological and leaf traits. Although dry grassland plants preferentially stored oligo- and polysaccharides, their water-use efficiency increased with greater concentrations of starch. Leaf relative water content deficit did not vary significantly between the grasslands and additionally, the relationship to plant economy was not always in accord with other measures of preference for water availability. Our results imply that belowground storage organs play a role in the response to reduced water availability. The strategies employed are further dependent upon the habitat and phylogeny of the species.

Background and Aims Although the plant economic spectrum seeks to explain resource allocation strategies, carbohydrate storage is often omitted. Belowground storage organs are the centre of herb perennation, yet little is known about the role of their turnover, anatomy and carbohydrate storage in relation to the aboveground economic spectrum. Methods We collected aboveground traits associated with the economic spectrum, storage organ turnover traits, storage organ inner structure traits and storage carbohydrate concentrations for ~80 temperate meadow species. Key Results The suites of belowground traits were largely independent of one another, but there was significant correlation of the aboveground traits with both inner structure and storage carbohydrates. Anatomical traits diverged according to leaf nitrogen concentration on the one hand and vessel area and dry matter content on the other; carbohydrates separated along gradients of leaf nitrogen concentration and plant height. Conclusions Contrary to our expectations, aboveground traits and not storage organ turnover were correlated with anatomy and storage carbohydrates. Belowground traits associated with the aboveground economic spectrum also did not fall clearly within the fast–slow economic continuum, thus indicating the presence of a more complicated economic space. Our study implies that the generally overlooked role of storage within the plant economic spectrum represents an important dimension of plant strategy.