Nutrient Elements in Leaves of Rare and Endangered Species in Wuhan Botanical Garden, China

Characteristics of mineral elements in plants are often strongly influenced by species' abundance and heterogeneous habitats. Therefore, nutrient analysis, after excluding interference of habitat heterogeneity, would directly reflect genetic traits of species in the community. From another aspect, knowledge of responses of species to environmental variation would be helpful in the management of natural and man-made ecosystems, especially those containing rare and endangered plants conserved in gardens. We studied the characteristics of twelve nutrient elements in 90 species in Wuhan Botanical Garden (WBG) and provided explanations of their survival status. Concentrations of the 12 nutrients in the artificial garden were consistent with those in other natural communities in the subtropical zone of China. Features of nutrient-limited at the community level were also consistent with the regional characteristics (N:P ratio being 9.79 ± 3.22, as exhibiting N-limited). The Ca + Mg concentrations differ...