well I hadn't really gotten that far...
you could test whether root aeration is important pretty easily, by sealing the root ball in an anaerobic environment, but leaving the leaves exposed to air. but I am willing to accept that the roots need air to perform cellular respiration--I think that fact is well established.
I'm not entirely sure how to test my hypothesis itself though. I was thinking that one thing to do would be to pot things in primeagra (but not s/h) and then titrate the watering frequency, even up to several times a day. as long as there's a way of showing that they get enough aeration despite the high frequency of watering, that might work. bark wouldn't work for this, since frequent watering leads to poor aeration. I guess you could even just use mounted or bare root plants too...
of course, I'm a little reticent to perform an experiment where the goal is to kills off roots...so someone else should do it and report their findings to me.
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