Effects of flooding on regrowth, generative potential of reed canary grass; insect damage

Since we've had a series of heavy rains, both the Vltava and Luznice Rivers have been flooded. The reed canarygrass growing along the river edges or in the floodplains were all laid flat (water can take a 2-3m plant and lay it down quite easily!). Once the waters subside, then new shoots emerge from the horizontal, existing stems....one adventitious bud at every node breaks forth into a new shoot. Soon it looks like newly mown reed canarygrass. In this picture, with shoots regrowing, the older plant stems (from earlier in the season) formed a mat approximately 0.5-1 m in depth that we had to walk on (more like bounce up and down on!) in order to get to the river's edge and collect.

I pulled out one entire original stem so you can see the regrowth potential of the shoots!
You can see how, if a stem section breaks off, it could be carried down the river, lodge somewhere and start a new clonal plant! Thus, the easy spreading of clones in riparian habitats...

Occasionally we note whether or not the samples collected have insect feeding damage (herbivory, in other words). Here you can see some damage inflicted on a sample. We remove the section that has been chewed on such that we don't have the potential DNA contamination from the insect.