The many ecosystem services that green roofs can provide rely on good plant coverage and plant survival, which is challenging in hot and dry climates. While true succulents like Sedum spp. have been shown to survive well on green roofs, there are limited studies relating individual traits or trait combinations to survival in other life-forms. Succulence is a rarely studied trait that describes plant water storage in leaves, stems and roots, regardless of life-form. This means that succulence can occur in plants which are not considered to be true succulents like Sedum or Crassula species. Improving water availability through succulence may improve survival on unirrigated green roofs, but succulence, as a trait, has rarely been investigated in plants which are not true succulents. We investigated whether succulence or trait combinations can relate well with survival and could be used to improve plant selection for different substrate depths on hot and dry green roofs. We conducted two experiments with the same 11 Mediterranean species (five herbs, three sub-shrubs and three shrubs); (1) a pot experiment to determine traits under well-watered conditions including: succulence, leaf lethal temperature, water use, root:shoot ratio and leaf area. These individual traits and the combinations of all these traits were used in the analyses of this experiment; and (2) a green-roof module experiment to determine survival in four substrate depths (10, 15, 20, and 25 cm). Survival was not related to succulence, indicating that increased internal water storage in non-succulent plants does not per se lead to greater survival in extreme conditions. Survival was also not related to individual traits relating to water use and leaf heat tolerance or trait combinations. Nevertheless, plants in the same functional groups had similar survival, which suggests plants with similar trait combinations can have similar survival on green roofs.

绿色屋顶可以提供的许多生态系统服务依赖于良好的植物覆盖率和植物存活率，这在炎热干燥的气候中具有挑战性。而真正的多肉植物，如景天属。已被证明可以在绿色屋顶上很好地生存，但将个体特征或特征组合与其他生命形式的生存联系起来的研究很有限。多肉是一种很少研究的性状，它描述了植物在叶子、茎和根中的水分储存，而不管生命形式如何。这意味着多肉植物可以出现在不被认为是真正多肉植物的植物中，如景天或景天属物种。通过多肉植物提高水的可用性可能会提高未灌溉绿色屋顶的存活率，但多肉植物作为一种性状，很少在不是真正多肉植物的植物中进行研究。我们研究了多肉植物或性状组合是否与生存密切相关，并可用于改善干热屋顶上不同基质深度的植物选择。我们对相同的 11 个地中海物种（五种草本、三种亚灌木和三种灌木）进行了两次实验；(1) 盆栽试验，以确定在充足浇水条件下的性状，包括：多汁性、叶致死温度、用水量、根茎比和叶面积。这些个体性状和所有这些性状的组合用于本实验的分析；(2) 一项绿色屋顶模块实验，用于确定四种基材深度（10、15、20 和 25 厘米）的存活率。存活率与多肉植物无关，表明非多肉植物内部储水量的增加本身并不会导致极端条件下的存活率更高。存活率也与与水分利用和叶片耐热性或性状组合相关的个体性状无关。然而，相同功能组的植物具有相似的存活率，这表明具有相似性状组合的植物在绿色屋顶上具有相似的存活率。存活率也与与水分利用和叶片耐热性或性状组合相关的个体性状无关。然而，相同功能组的植物具有相似的存活率，这表明具有相似性状组合的植物在绿色屋顶上具有相似的存活率。存活率也与与水分利用和叶片耐热性或性状组合相关的个体性状无关。然而，相同功能组的植物具有相似的存活率，这表明具有相似性状组合的植物在绿色屋顶上具有相似的存活率。