Dead or Alive: The Effect of Mother Plants on First Year Seedling Health
Faculty Mentor Information
Dr. Jennifer Forbey, Boise State University
Presentation Date
7-15-2026
Abstract
Recruitment is a major factor in plant reproduction and success. This process involves a mature plant acting as a “mother plant” to seedlings (recruits). These recruits can be from any species. The increase in disturbed landscapes and the potential benefits of the structure of a mother plant without the inherent competition warrant inquiry into the topic of dead recruitment. We hypothesized that there would be no difference in growth trends between species, and that recruits would have an increasing survival and size in the following treatment order: Bare soil < Dead mother plant < Live mother plant. For this study we used Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus as the mother plant and transplanted two shrubs, Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus and Artemisia tridentata, and two forbs, Achillea milefolium and Machaeranthera canescens. We identified three pairs of rabbitbrush, one dead and one alive, on the same hillside and cleared the top inch of soil in a one-foot radius around each shrub. We cleared another circle of roughly the same radius to act as bare soil control. We then transplanted in each plot, watered them into the soil, and left them for 11 months to grow, returning to measure height, width, and survival. Predictive models correlate the response variables of height, width, and survival and utilize the independent variables of treatment and species. This reveals that forbs survive better with dead treatment, but A. tridentata survived better in the bare and live treatments. Additionally, we found that forbs grow fastest with a live mother plant and slowest in the bare soil, and the opposite trend was observed with the shrubs.
Dead or Alive: The Effect of Mother Plants on First Year Seedling Health
Recruitment is a major factor in plant reproduction and success. This process involves a mature plant acting as a “mother plant” to seedlings (recruits). These recruits can be from any species. The increase in disturbed landscapes and the potential benefits of the structure of a mother plant without the inherent competition warrant inquiry into the topic of dead recruitment. We hypothesized that there would be no difference in growth trends between species, and that recruits would have an increasing survival and size in the following treatment order: Bare soil < Dead mother plant < Live mother plant. For this study we used Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus as the mother plant and transplanted two shrubs, Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus and Artemisia tridentata, and two forbs, Achillea milefolium and Machaeranthera canescens. We identified three pairs of rabbitbrush, one dead and one alive, on the same hillside and cleared the top inch of soil in a one-foot radius around each shrub. We cleared another circle of roughly the same radius to act as bare soil control. We then transplanted in each plot, watered them into the soil, and left them for 11 months to grow, returning to measure height, width, and survival. Predictive models correlate the response variables of height, width, and survival and utilize the independent variables of treatment and species. This reveals that forbs survive better with dead treatment, but A. tridentata survived better in the bare and live treatments. Additionally, we found that forbs grow fastest with a live mother plant and slowest in the bare soil, and the opposite trend was observed with the shrubs.