Growth rates of grass species with contrasting photosynthetic pathways and life histories

This dataset contains sequential biomass harvests from a plant growth experiment carried out under controlled environmental conditions in Sheffield. The experiment was carried out in three parts in 2016 and 2017, and was designed to investigate differences in growth among grasses with the C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathways, and with annual and perennial life histories. Plants were harvested approximately weekly over a period of five weeks.

The data include information on the dry biomass of roots and leaves, and the numbers of roots, leaves and shoot branches. Also included is an independent dataset of leaf anatomical characteristics derived from herbarium specimens, which was used to test how mechanical support scales with leaf size. Finally, the data include the phylogenetic relationships among species, which were used in analyses.

The work was funded by NERC standard grant NE/N003152/1.