Dr. Briggs Colloquium Abstract - Allelopathic potential of goldenrod Allelopathic potential of Solidago altissima Michelle A. Briggs Plants can interact with their neighbors in many ways, including allelopathy.
Allelopathic interactions arise because plants release chemicals into the environment.
This could be due to competition for light, water or soil nutrients. However, this pattern may be due to more than simple competition, since related species have been shown to be allelopathic. I hypothesized that goldenrod allelochemicals may suppress the germination and growth of other open field plant species. To find if there were field plants excluded from a goldenrod clone, I censured 102 field plots. All common species existed outside a clone, at the clone edge and at the clone center, even though the number of goldenrod stems was significantly different between areas.