MORPHOLOGICAL AND GENETICAL VARIABILITY OF RUBUS HIRTUS (WALDST. & KITT.) PLANTS UNDER PARTLY OPEN FOREST CANOPY POLISH JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY

ABSTRACT: Blackberries growing in forests regenerate mainly in a vegetative way; however, detailed studies have shown substantial vari-ability in performance of Rubus individuals. The main problem is if the differences among plants are genetically based, or are due to site hetero-geneity? This study was aimed at determining 1) how large are the differences in performance of individual plants and how persistent they are during consecutive years, 2) how much of that variability can be explained by the local envi-ronmental conditions, especially the intensity of competition among plants, and whether the per-formance of individual plants is related to their genetic characteristics. In a partially cut matur