EN
Blackberries growing in forests regenerate mainly in a vegetative way; however, detailed studies have shown substantial variability in performance of Rubus individuals. The main problem is if the differences among plants are genetically based, or are due to site heterogeneity? This study was aimed at determining 1) how large are the differences in performance of individual plants and how persistent they are during consecutive years, 2) how much of that variability can be explained by the local environmental conditions, especially the intensity of competition among plants, and whether the performance of individual plants is related to their genetic characteristics. In a partially cut mature beech forest in Western Carpathians 35 randomly chosen individuals of Rubus hirtus (Waldst. & Kitt.) were tagged and measured each year for 9 years. Ten largest and ten smallest individuals were selected for genetic analysis. Mean size of individual plants differed between consecutive growing seasons, but the overall size ranking was quite consistent throughout the entire period of study. Analysis of environmental variables: relative light intensity and local abundance of potential competitors explained about 24% of the differences in individual plant performance. In the genetic analysis the five primers were applied to analyse all 20 samples. The five primers produced 10 polymorphic bands, showing a high variability. Only a few samples displayed identical band patterns, indicating either vegetative propagation or apomictic origin. Distribution of the results of Spearman’s rank correlation of plant size among genetically related individuals did not differ significantly from the distribution of rank correlation coefficients in the entire sample. In the analysed population genetical affinity did not seem to correlate with the performance of Rubus hirtus.