Plant species richness and diversity of the serpentine areas on the Witwatersrand -- Temporal changes in species diversity and composition in abandoned fields in a trans-Himalayan landscape, Nepal -- Role of desert annuals in nutrient flow in arid area of Northwestern China: a nutrient reservoir and provider -- The effects of fire frequency and grazing on tallgrass prairie productivity and plant composition are mediated through bud bank demography -- Do plant functional types based on leaf dry matter content allow characterizing native grass species and grasslands for herbage growth pattern? -- Clonal growth strategies in simultaneously persistent and expanding Trifolium repens patches -- California native and exotic perennial grasses differ in their response to soil nitrogen, exotic annual grass density, and order of emergence -- Do seed and microsite limitation interact with seed size in determining invasion patterns in flooding Pampa grasslands? -- Feral horses dung piles as potential invasion windows for alien plant species in natural grasslands -- Reproductive allocation of Carex flava reacts differently to competition and resources in a designed plant mixture of five species -- Factors affecting the establishment and growth of annual legumes in semi-arid mediterranean grasslands -- Are irrigation and grazing effects transferred, accumulated, or counteracted during plant recruitment? -- Extent and spatial patterns of grass bald land cover change (1948-2000), Oregon Coast Range, USA -- Grass (Poaceae) richness patterns across China's nature reserves -- Interacting effects of grass height and herbivores on the establishment of an encroaching savanna shrub -- Effects of competition on root-shoot allocation in Plantago lanceolata L.: adaptive plasticity or ontogenetic drift? -- Rock-colonizing plants: abundance of the endemic cactus Mammillaria fraileana related to rock type in the southern Sonoran Desert -- Ecophysiological responses of nine floodplain meadow species to changing hydrological conditions -- Tolerance of a perennial herb, Pimpinella saxifraga, to simulated flower herbivory and grazing: immediate repair of injury or postponed reproduction? -- Differential herbivory tolerance of dominant and subordinate plant species along gradients of nutrient availability and competition -- Responses of clonal architecture to experimental defoliation: a comparative study between ten grassland species -- Diffuse knapweed (Centaurea diffusa Lam.) seedling emergence and establishment in a Colorado grassland -- Biodiversity and tallgrass prairie decomposition: the relative importance of species identity, evenness, richness, and micro-topography -- Herbivory and local genetic differentiation in natural populations of Arabidopsis thaliana (Brassicaceae) -- The effect of nutrient supply and light intensity on tannins and mycorrhizal colonisation in Dutch heathland ecosystems -- Spatial and temporal dynamics of floating and drift-line seeds at a tidal freshwater marsh on the Potomac River, USA -- Estimating plant competition coefficients and predicting community dynamics from non-destructive pin-point data: a case study with Calluna vulgaris and Deschampsia flexuosa -- Disturbance by mowing affects clonal diversity: the genetic structure of Ranunculus ficaria (Ranunculuaceae) in meadows and forests -- Soil amendment effects on the exotic annual grass Bromus tectorum L. and facilitation of its growth by the native perennial grass Hilaria jamesii (Torr.) Benth -- Effects of fire on the vegetation of a lowland heathland in North-western Italy. This volume provides an overview of recent advances in the ecology of various kinds of non-forested ecosystems (grasslands, deserts, and wetlands) on a variety of topics, including species diversity and the factors that control species diversity, impacts of disturbances (grazing, mowing, fire, flooding), establishment and reproduction ecology, and plant-plant interactions. Previously published in Plant Ecology, Volume 201, No.2, 2009.