Leymus chinensis (Trin.) Tzvel., a perennial grass, is a dominant species from arid to semi-arid steppes in northern China and eastern Mongolia. Phragmites communis Trin. is also a perennial grass, and is distributed widely in the world. In the natural grasslands of northeastern China, both species always co-exist as co-dominating species due to their common characteristics such as propagation both by seeds and vegetative reproduction. Replacement series experiments were used to test the effects of nutrient availability and competitive interaction on the growth performance of two clonal plant species. The experimental treatments included five nutrient levels (3.6, 7.2, 10.8, 14.4 and 18.0 kg organic matter per pot, 20 cm diameter and 15 cm deep) and five species proportions (20:0, 16:4, 10:10, 4:16 and 0:20 for L. chinensis and P. communis, respectively) with twenty tillers in total per pot. Each treatment had 10 replications. Growth characteristics including tiller height, tiller number, plant biomass, rhizome length and bud number of plants in monoculture and mixture culture were recorded and compared to examine the effects of nutrient and competitive interaction on the plant performance. The growth of L. chinensis and P. communis in mixture was influenced by the nutrient availability and competition, which depended on the combination between nutrient level and species proportion. The results implied that the intensity of competition should be lower in nutrient-poor habitats when the co-existing species demanded on the same limiting resource. P. communis benefited from coexisting with L. chinensis, especially under nutrient-rich conditions. The aboveground relative yield (RYabove) expressed in units of tiller height, dry biomass and daughter tiller number was recommended as an effective and simple index to predict the relative competitive ability for clonal plants. It was based on the regression for RY above and RYbelow (the belowground relative yield) against RY (relative yield), measured as yield in mixture divided by that in monoculture.
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