Soil seed bank in a North-Hungarian oak forest
Abstract
The tree decay started in the 80’s restructured the forest of the Síkfőkút Project The cover of the shrub layer increased, while the herb’s cover decreased. The herb layer cover was 21% in 1973. This decreased to 6% by 1988, and it remained under 8%. We examined the herb seed bank of the forest with germination method. Our objective was to answer how dense was the seed bank of the forest, what was the similarity to the vegetation and what role plays in the regeneration of the forest herb layer. We found relatively low seed bank density with ca. 1270 seed/m². There were 314 individuals of 33 species germinated from the seed concentrated soil samples. The similarity (Sørenson-index) between the aboveground and belowground vegetation was 44%. The 80% of seeds was ruderal in the soil samples. 86% of them were long-term persistent. The most frequent was the Chenopodium polyspermum, probably reflecting the agricultural activity near the area. Our results suggest that the forest herb species form a low dense transient and short-term persistent seed bank (ca. 120 seeds/m²).
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