Result:

Plant community(rhizomatous and non-rhizomatous) had significant effect on Festuca height. There were significant differences in Festuca height between rhizomatous and non-rhizomatous community. Festuca in rhizomatous plot had larger height than in non-rhizomatous plot (figure 19).

 Figure 19: Bar plot shows the significant effect of plot on Festuca height . Error bars represent standard errors and letters demonstrate significant differences found during multi-way ANOVA test on data. Festuca in rhizomatous plot is taller than in non-rhizomatous plot, but there is no significant effect of soil class because Festuca has the same height in different soil depth.

Soil class (deep-shallow) had significant effect on Festuca width.There were significant differences in Festuca width between shallow and deep soil.
The width of Festuca was higher in shallow soil than in deep soil (figure 20).

Figure 20: Barplot shows the significant effects shallow and deep soil on Festuca width.  Error bars represent standard errors and letters demonstrate significant differences found during multi-way ANOVA test on transformed data. Festuca in shallow soil has higher width than in deep soil. In addition, there is no significant effect of plot on width, because Festuca shows the same width in rhiz and non-rhiz plot.

There were some interaction effects between soil depth and different species. In some species, larger height can be seen in shallow soil than in deep soil for example, Campanula and Heterotheca (figure 21).

Figure 21: Barplot of height of all peer species (in rhiz and non-rhiz plot). It shows the effects of soil class, rhizomatous and non-rhizomatous plots on all species height. Due to the interaction between soil class and species, in some cases larger height can be seen in shallow soil than in deep soil like Campanula and Heterotheca.

Conclusion:

It was expected to have more Festuca growth (with higher height and width) in deeper soil and in non-rhizomatous community. But the results of this study indicated the larger height of Festuca in rhizomatous community and higher width in shallow soil. In addition, we expected that plot or soil depth would affect both height and width similarly, but the results showed that plot only affected Festuca height significantly and soil depth influenced only Festuca width. For this reason, I am going to monitor these plots next summer and I expect the result will change and the trend will be more dramatic. 

" This is a class exercise based on modified or randomly generated datasets. "