Fragaria vesca L. on the ash dumps of the Middle Urals

The purpose of this work is to study both spatial and age structures of the coenopopulations, as well as the morphological parameters and mycorrhizal roots of Fragaria vesca L., the family Rosaceae Juss. (forest strawberry, the family of Rosaceae) growing on the uneven-aged ash dumps of the Middle Urals (ash dumps of the Nizhneuturinskaya and Verkhnetagilskaya state district power stations) and in the natural forest community. F. vesca begins to settle on the ash dumps of the Urals at the initial stages of the forest phytocoenoses formation. It is shown that all investigated coenopopulations of F. vesca are normal, incomplete, and have a group type of distribution for individuals in space. The analysis of the indices of age, effectiveness and recovery showed that coenopopulations are young at all sites. As the age of the examined coenopopulations increases, the proportion of immature individuals decreases and the proportion of generative individuals increases. The predominant biomorph in F. vesca in the investigated coenopopulations is monocentric. With the increase of age, a decrease in the proportion of individuals with a clearly polycentric biomorph is observed. Our study registered the increase in the following morphological parameters of F. vesca: the plant height, the weight of the air-dry aboveground phytomass, the length of the petiole, the area of the leaf. In all studied populations, the ar buscular mycorrhiza was found in the roots of F. vesca. All parameters of the root mycorrhization depended on the degree of the plant communities’ formation.