Figures from a scientific article "Phenological escape and its importance for understory plant species in temperate forests" by Benjamin R Lee, Abby J Yancy and J. Mason Heberling (International Journal of Plant Sciences).
Figure 2: Conceptual figure illustrating differences in seasonal distributions of photosynthetic activity (carbon assimilation) for temperate herbs with differing phenological syndromes (evergreen, purple; spring ephemeral, salmon; summer-green, aqua) relative to understory light levels (yellow line). The shape and magnitude of these conceptual photosynthetic activity curves may vary within and among species. For example, summer-green species vary in their relative proportion of early spring photosynthetic gain that occurs before overstory tree canopy closure.
Figure 3:Spring-active understory plants emerge from dormancy before the canopy closes in late spring, allowing them to make use of early season high light availability (duration represented by the height of the green bar on the left of the figure). Timing of canopy closure (square points) and understory leaf-out phenology (circles) are both moving earlier as spring temperatures warm, but duration of spring light access might either (i) decrease, (ii) stay the same, or (iii) lengthen, depending on whether understory phenological sensitivity is weaker than, equal to, or stronger than the sensitivity of co-occurring canopy trees, respectively. This figure is adapted with permission from Lee & Ibáñez (2021a).
