University Herbarium and Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
School of Integrative Plant Science, Section of Plant Biology and the L.H. Bailey Hortorium, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
Am J Bot. 2021 Mar;108(3):372-387. doi: 10.1002/ajb2.1623. Epub 2021 Mar 24.
Herbaceous plants collectively known as geophytes, which regrow from belowground buds, are distributed around the globe and throughout the land plant tree of life. The geophytic habit is an evolutionarily and ecologically important growth form in plants, permitting novel life history strategies, enabling the occupation of more seasonal climates, mediating interactions between plants and their water and nutrient resources, and influencing macroevolutionary patterns by enabling differential diversification and adaptation. These taxa are excellent study systems for understanding how convergence on a similar growth habit (i.e., geophytism) can occur via different morphological and developmental mechanisms. Despite the importance of belowground organs for characterizing whole-plant morphological diversity, the morphology and evolution of these organs have been vastly understudied with most research focusing on only a few crop systems. Here, we clarify the terminology commonly used (and sometimes misused) to describe geophytes and their underground organs and highlight key evolutionary patterns of the belowground morphology of geophytic plants. Additionally, we advocate for increasing resources for geophyte research and implementing standardized ontological definitions of geophytic organs to improve our understanding of the factors controlling, promoting, and maintaining geophyte diversity.
草本植物统称为地下芽植物，它们从地下芽重新生长，分布在全球各地和陆地植物的生命之树上。地下芽习性是植物中一种具有进化和生态重要性的生长形式，允许新的生活史策略，使植物能够适应更多季节性气候，调节植物与其水和养分资源之间的相互作用，并通过使分化和适应不同而影响宏观进化模式。这些类群是研究如何通过不同的形态和发育机制在相似的生长习性（即地下芽习性）上趋同的理想研究体系。尽管地下器官对于描述整个植物形态多样性非常重要，但这些器官的形态和进化在很大程度上被忽视了，大多数研究仅集中在少数几个作物系统上。在这里，我们澄清了描述地下芽植物及其地下器官的常用术语（有时也会误用），并强调了地下形态的关键进化模式。此外，我们提倡增加地下芽植物研究资源，并实施地下芽器官的标准化本体定义，以提高我们对控制、促进和维持地下芽多样性的因素的理解。
