Science magazine | Highlights of the recent literature | 17.07.2009
Corydalis conorhiza, a plant of the poppy family that grows at 2800 m in the Caucasus mountains...
... produces extensive networks of roots that grow upward and laterally into the snowpack that carpets the high slopes until the July thaw. Isotope experiments showed that these roots, which are anatomically distinct from the normal roots that grow downward into the soil, take up nitrogen directly from the snow-pack, thus exploiting a resource that would otherwise disappear down the mountainside during the brief summer.
More here: V.G. Onipchenko et al., New nitrogen uptake strategy: specialized snow roots. Ecology Letters 12, 758, 2009.
our investigation does not exclude the possibility that the snow roots are positioned inside the snow pack early on but that the major N uptake only occurs during final melt-out.
