Linya Xing ¹ Jiaxin Quan ¹ Shuqi Zhang ¹ Xiao Liu ^1,2* Hua Bai ¹ Ming Yue ^1,3

• ¹ Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China, Ministry of Education, Northwest University, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China
• ² Northwest University, Xi'an, China
• ³ Xi’an Botanical Garden of Shaanxi Province, Xian, Shanxi, China

The touch by neighboring plants, is a common but overlooked environmental variable for plants, especially in dense vegetation. In addition, shade is inevitable for understory plants. The growth performance of clonal plant to the interaction between thigmomorphogenesis and shade response, and their impact on light adaptability is still unknown. At the present study, parental ramets of Glechoma longituba were exposed to two conditions (neighboring touch and shade), and their offspring ramets were in ambient or shaded environment. The phenotype and growth of parental and offspring ramets were analyzed. The results showed that neighboring touch of parental ramets regulated the performance of offspring ramets, while the effect depended on the light environment. The parental neighboring touch occurring in ambient environment suppressed the expansion of leaf organ, showed as a shorter petiole, smaller leaf area, depressed leaf investment, these compressions may benefit in withstanding potential mechanical stress. Moreover, G. longituba exhibited both shade avoidance and shade tolerance characters to shaded environment, such as increased leaf area ratio and leaf mass ratio, longer specific petiole length and specific stolon length. It was notable that these characters of shade response could be promoted by parental neighboring touch to some extent. Additionally, parental light environment plays an important role in offspring growth, parent with ambient light always had well-grown offspring whatever the light condition of offspring, but the growth of offspring whose parent in shaded environment was inhibited. Finally, for the offspring with shaded environment, the touch between parental ramets in shade environment showed a disadvantage on their growth, but the influence of the touch between parental ramets in ambient environment was slight. Overall, the interaction of parental neighboring touch and shade environment complicate the growth of understory plants, the performance of plants is the integrated effect of both. This findings are conducive to understanding the environmental adaptation of plants deeply.