In general terms, different plant species are adapted to soils of different pH ranges. For many species, the suitable soil pH range is fairly well known. Online databases of plant characteristics, such as USDA PLANTS and Plants for a Future can be used to look up the suitable soil pH range of a wide range of plants. Documents like Ellenbergs indicator values for British plants' can also be consulted.
However, a plant may be intolerant of a particular pH in some soils as a result of a particular mechanism, and that mechanism may not apply in other soils. For example, a soil low in molybdenum may not be suitable for soybean plants at pH 5.5, but soils with sufficient molybdenum allow optimal growth at that pH. Similarly, some calcifuges (plants intolerant of high-pH soils) can tolerate calcareous soils if sufficient phosphorus is supplied. Another confounding factor is that different varieties of the same species often have different suitable soil pH ranges. Plant breeders can use this to breed varieties that can tolerate conditions that are otherwise considered unsuitable for that species – examples are projects to breed aluminium-tolerant and manganese-tolerant varieties of cereal crops for food production in strongly acidic soils.
The table below gives suitable soil pH ranges for some widely cultivated plants as found in the USDA PLANTS Database. Some species (like Pinus radiata and Opuntia ficus-indica) tolerate only a narrow range in soil pH, whereas others (such as Vetiveria zizanioides) tolerate a very wide pH range.
In natural or near-natural plant communities, the various pH preferences of plant species (or ecotypes) at least partly determine the composition and biodiversity of vegetation. While both very low and very high pH values are detrimental to plant growth, there is an increasing trend of plant biodiversity along the range from extremely acidic (pH 3.5) to strongly alkaline (pH 9) soils, i.e. there are more calcicole than calcifuge species, at least in terrestrial environments. Although widely reported and supported by experimental results, the observed increase of plant species richness with pH is still in need of a clearcut explanation. Competitive exclusion between plant species with overlapping pH ranges most probably contributes to the observed shifts of vegetation composition along pH gradients.