XVI International Botanical Congess

We examined morphological variation of a trimorphic weed, Lythrum salicaria in a greenhouse experiment involving cloned genotypes and four soil moisture treatments. Vegetative characters such as shoot length, shoot and root biomass and their proportional allocation did not differ among morphs, however, the length and biomass of inflorescence differed significantly among morphs. Reproductive traits such as biomass of pistil, and stamen, and length of stamen and pistil were significantly different among morphs. Soil moisture treatment also has significant influence on vegetative and reproductive traits. Norms of reaction for each genotype and morph were determined for all the traits. Although, the reaction norms of a few traits could be distinguished among morphs, those of the genotypes of a morph could not be distinguished from each other. This implies that average differences among genotypes are not consistent, and therefore may be unavailable to selection. Mal, Tarun K.