2.3 Harvest and sampling
Destructive sampling (harvest) was conducted twice, one on 1 October
2018 as pre-winter samples, and the other one on 2 April 2019 as
post-winter samples. One plant was randomly selected from each
sub-sub-plot for each harvest time, and 48 individuals (24 individuals
for each species; 3 for each nutrient and drought treatment) were
harvested for each time (Fig. S2). The whole plant was harvested, the
roots were carefully washed, and the plants were separated into leaves
(Oct. 2018 only), shoots, and belowground tissue and separately sampled
(leaves, shoots, mixed roots (i.e., fine and coarse roots). The samples
were immediately put in an oven at 105°C for half an hour to stop the
metabolic activity, and then were dried at 65°C until stable weight. The
dried samples were ground to fine powder, using a ball mill (MM 400;
Retsch, Haan, Germany), for NSC analysis.