Number of seedlings germinated as obtained in a common garden experiment under ambient light and temperature conditions for 219 grassland species common in the experimental grassland plots of the Biodiversity Exploratories

During the last two decades, the research on plant functional traits has advanced rapidly. However, so far, research has focused on traits of adult plants, while research on seedling traits is scarce. Seedling traits, however, could play an important role during plant establishment from seeds and they are essential to understand the full plant life cycle. <br>We studied the seedling traits: the number of seeds that germinated, the number of weeks until 50% of seeds had germinated (= T50), the date when the first seeds had germinated, and the number of weeks until the first seed had germinated. For this, we examined 219 temperate grassland species which were sown as single species in a microcosm experiment. The experiment was conducted in an open greenhouse with ambient light and temperature conditions (UFZ Field Station Bad Lauchstädt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany) between November 2020 and July 2021. We obtained data for 213 species, which germinated successfully.<br>The microcosm experiment was part of the project SeedDiv within the framework of the DFG-funded joint project Biodiversity Exploratories (https://www.biodiversity-exploratories.de).