Question

Why do evergreen plants of northern wetlands have many xerophytic features? Should this also be true for deciduous plants in these habitats?

Answer 1

Ans: The species of plants that have features of water adaptation to survive in low availability of water areas are known as xerophytes. These are mainly found in the areas of desert regions and snow-covered regions. These adaptation features like shallow roots, aerenchyma, etc help them to conserve water and use it for a dry period. Some xerophytic plants can store so large amounts of water and can suspect themself for a long period of time like cacti plants. Evergreen plants present in northern wetlands also show some features of xerophytes. The shedding of leaves is usually done each year as deciduous plants do but in the case of evergreen plants of N. wetland they do not. The reason is they have an insufficient amount of nutrients and they are efficient. Moreover, Xerophytic nature can also be seen when most of the wetlands shrubs started to grow into their roots in water, they started to show leaf characteristic like rolled margins, wholly undercoating, waxy coating. This type of xerophytic feature of conservation of water is indicated because it is a response of these evergreen plants towards the low nutrients level that are present in wetland habitats. Deciduous plants do not show such features like xerophytes they shed their leaves each year. They usually show opposite features of evergreen shows because they fallout or remove any used part that is no longer in use for themselves.