The first problem is related to soils. Free-living soil organisms are commonly
opportunistic and become active whenever temperatures and soil moisture permit.
One could envisage warmer winters with high microbial activity and release of
nutrients by the decomposer food web, but plants, with their evolutionary ‘memory’,
are still constrained to use these resources because of photoperiod- and chillingcontrolled
dormancy. These free nutrients need to be either stored in microbial
biomass or become tied to charged surfaces (ion exchange) in the substrate or else
become washed out by winter rains. It could well be that the ion exchange capacity
of soils will determine whether such genotype controls of plant dormancy will lead
to nutrient losses (leaching) of the system.