An ephemeral plant is one marked by short life cycles. The word ephemeral means transitory or quickly fading. In regard to

plant Plants are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic eukaryotes of the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all curr ...

s, it refers to several distinct growth strategies. The first, spring ephemeral, refers to perennial plants that emerge quickly in the spring and die back to their underground parts after a short growth and reproduction phase. Desert ephemerals are plants which are adapted to take advantage of the short wet periods in

arid A region is arid when it severely lacks available water, to the extent of hindering or preventing the growth and development of plant and animal life. Regions with arid climates tend to lack vegetation and are called xeric or desertic. Most ...

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologica ...

s. Mud-flat ephemerals take advantage of short periods of low water. In areas subjected to recurring human disturbance, such as plowing, weedy ephemerals are very short-lived plants whose entire

life cycle Life cycle, life-cycle, or lifecycle may refer to: Science and academia * Biological life cycle, the sequence of life stages that an organism undergoes from birth to reproduction ending with the production of the offspring * Life-cycle hypothesi ...

takes less than a

growing season A season is a division of the year marked by changes in weather, ecology, and the amount of daylight. The growing season is that portion of the year in which local conditions (i.e. rainfall, temperature, daylight) permit normal plant growth. Wh ...

. In each case, the species has a life cycle timed to exploit a short period when resources are freely available.

Spring ephemerals

Spring ephemerals are

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

woodland wildflowers which develop aerial parts (i.e.

stem Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushr ...

s, leaves, and

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism ...

s) of the

early each spring and then quickly bloom, and produce seed. The leaves often wither leaving only underground structures (i.e.

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...

s, rhizomes, and

bulb In botany, a bulb is structurally a short stem with fleshy leaves or leaf basesBell, A.D. 1997. ''Plant form: an illustrated guide to flowering plant morphology''. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. that function as food storage organs du ...

s) for the remainder of the year. This strategy is very common in

herbaceous Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennials, and nearly all annuals and biennials. Definitions of "herb" and "herbaceous" The fourth edition ...

communities of

deciduous forest In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, af ...

s as it allows small herbaceous plants to take advantage of the high levels of sunlight reaching the forest floor prior to the formation of a canopy by

woody plant A woody plant is a plant that produces wood as its structural tissue and thus has a hard stem. In cold climates, woody plants further survive winter or dry season above ground, as opposite to herbaceous plants that die back to the ground until s ...

s. Examples include: spring beauties, trilliums, harbinger of spring and the genus of '' Dicentra'' particularly ''D. cucullaria,'' Dutchman's breeches and ''D. canadensis,'' squirrel corn. In the herb layer of beech forest and hornbeam-sessile oak forest, tuberous, bulbous and rhizomous plants are abundant. They comprise the spring

geophyte A storage organ is a part of a plant specifically modified for storage of energy (generally in the form of carbohydrates) or water. Storage organs often grow underground, where they are better protected from attack by herbivores. Plants that have ...

s (tuberous, bulbous and rhizomous).

Desert ephemerals

Desert ephemerals, such as ''

Arabidopsis thaliana ''Arabidopsis thaliana'', the thale cress, mouse-ear cress or arabidopsis, is a small flowering plant native to Eurasia and Africa. ''A. thaliana'' is considered a weed; it is found along the shoulders of roads and in disturbed land. A winter ...

'', are plants which are adapted to take advantage of the very short favourable seasons in deserts. Annual plants in deserts may use the weedy ephemeral strategy to survive in the desert environment. These

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...

survive the dry seasons through seed dormancy. Alternatively, some

desert plants may die back to their underground parts and become dormant when there is not enough water available.

Mud flat ephemerals

Most water bodies have natural changes in water level over a year. For example, rivers have higher water periods after melting snow or rainy seasons, followed by natural low water periods. Large lakes have similar seasonal changes, but also changes over longer periods of time. Many short-lived plants, particularly annual plants, grow during low water periods, then set seeds which remain buried in the mud until the next low water period.

Weedy ephemerals

Many agricultural weeds are ephemeral and reproduce rapidly after human disturbance from plowing. Roadside weeds similarly exploit the disturbance from road construction and mowing. These plants rarely have any commercial use and can be

invasive weed An invasive species otherwise known as an alien is an introduced organism that becomes overpopulated and harms its new environment. Although most introduced species are neutral or beneficial with respect to other species, invasive species adv ...

s. Examples include: ''

Cardamine hirsuta ''Cardamine hirsuta'', commonly called hairy bittercress, is an annual or biennial species of plant in the family Brassicaceae, and is edible as a salad green. It is common in moist areas around the world. Description Depending on the climate ...

'' and '' Cannabis ruderalis''. Plants which have short life spans, rapid rates of growth, and high levels of seed production are also termed ruderals.Grime, J. P. 1979. Plant Strategies and Vegetation Processes. Chichester: John Wiley.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ephemeral Plant Flowers