Fig. 1.

Climate data for Perth, Northam and Merredin, where seed bags were buried for the period of December 2008 to December 2010: mean monthly temperature range and mean monthly rainfall, as indicated. ‘Total rainfall’ = cumulative rainfall for the entire trial period; ‘No. of rain days’ = total number of days on which ≥1 mm rainfall was recorded during the trial period; ‘No. of rain events’ = number of rain events during the study period, where one ‘rain event’ was defined as a day or consecutive days of ≥1 mm rainfall, bounded by ≥1 day with zero rainfall. All data were taken from the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology (2010).