Various plant traits are widely utilised to assess environment health. However, non-monotonic responses in plants (hormesis and non-hormetic ones) can induce an incorrect assessment of contamination level because they have maximums and/or minimums. Hence, an increase in the pollution level will not always be accompanied by plant index deteriorations. The frequencies of non-monotonic responses, especially non-hormetic responses, have been insufficiently studied for plant traits. This study analysed the frequencies of non-monotonic changes in plants experiencing urban chemical pollution (B. pendula, T. cordata and T. officinale) and with different pollutant exposures (heavy metals, herbicide glyphosate, formaldehyde and sodium chloride) in experiments (T. aestivum and P. sativum). In the city, we evaluated the traits in plants with the same ontogenetic stages on plots near roads with various traffic and similar abiotic conditions. In urban areas, non-monotonic responses were found in both woody (B. pendula and T. cordata) and herbaceous (T. officinale) species for most traits. Their frequencies corresponded to the proportion of monotonic responses (B. pendula) or were even higher (T. cordata and T. officinale). In studied trees, non-monotonic responses were more common in biochemical traits compared with non-biochemical ones. With experimental pollutant exposure, non-monotonic responses were obtained for most traits of both dicotyledonous (P. sativum) and monocotyledonous (T. aestivum) plants, and their frequency was significantly higher than for monotonic ones. Non-hormetic responses significantly prevailed among non-monotonic changes of plant indexes in the city and experiments. Thus, it is necessary to consider both hormesis and non-hormetic responses to assess correctly environmental quality using plant indexes.
Keywords: Biological monitoring; Environmental contaminants; Hormetic curve; Non-hormetic replies; Plant traits.