Soil nutrient pattern can be a functional tool for grassland restoration. In order to promote the growth of a specific or group of expected plant species, it is necessary to measure the responses of different species to nutrient – rich patches and detect the differences among them. In this article, we measured aboveground biomass and morphological traits of six species as dry weight, length, surface area, specific root length and diameter of fine roots in response to nitrogen addition patches using ingrowth core method. The six species are Artemisia scoparia, Stipa bungeana, Artemisia sacrorum, Artemisia giraldii, Lespedeza dahurica and Astragalus melilotoides. All are the dominant species in different stages of secondary succession of loess hilly region, China. Twelve individuals of each species were selected to install ingrowth cores. Six of the individuals were used as treatment group, they were treated to install with four cores of no (addition’s control), low, medium and high levels of nitrogen additions. Another six of them were used as species’ control group, the four installed cores around them had no nitrogen addition. The results showed that: 1) After 105 days in situ, for all the six species, summed dry weight, length and surface area measured in the four cores of the treatment group were significantly greater than the corresponding values in species’ control group. In aboveground biomass, however, only A. scoparia in the treatment group had significantly outweighed that in the species’ control group. 2) Irrespective of nitrogen additions levels, significant differences of length, diameter and surface area existed among the six species, which implied that species had their intrinsic species specific morphological traits. 3) In dry weight, length and surface area, the responses of all the six species to nitrogen addition levels were positive, significantly more roots were grew into the cores with higher nitrogen additions; while in specific root length, the responses were negative. 4) Perhaps the six species had a special nitrogen requirement, as interaction effects of species and addition levels in surface area were found significant. 5) The foraging precision of the six species to nutrient-rich patches had positive but insignificant correlation with root system size; there existed a significant positive correlation between the precision and the sensitivity to the designed patchy habiats. 6) Among the six species, A. scoparia, A. sacrorum and S. bungeana have higher sensitivity and precision than L. dahurica and A. melilotoides in terms of foraging the nitrogen addition cores or patches. It seems that fast growing species that dominate in early successional stage, like A. scoparia and S. bungeana in our case, obtained more benefits from nutrient patchy habitat. We advised that, in infertile lands, fertiliser be applied in a patchy way to accelerate the restoration of old fields as early as possible once they were abandoned.
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