<p>The parental environment can influence the phenotype of the offspring generation. Such parental environmental effects may be transmitted via epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation. In a set of annual plant species, exposure of the parental generation to disparate nitrogen availability was previously shown to effect trait expression of the progeny. In this study, we explore whether these elicited transgenerational responses are associated with inherited DNA methylation. We exposed a parental generation of six annual plant species to nitrogen-limitation (N-limitation) or balanced nutrient supply (balanced). Their offspring were exposed to increasing amounts of the demethylation agent zebularine during germination aiming to alter the inheritance of DNA methylation, or a control treatment. The two offspring types were grown again under N-limited and balanced conditions. When germinated in the absence of zebularine and grown under N-limitation, offspring of N-limited parents showed longer and thinner roots, as well as larger leaves, compared to the offspring of balanced-parents. Such transgenerational effects, known to be advantageous under N-limitation, were removed by demethylation; i.e., demethylated offspring of N-deficient parents produced roots of similar length (in <i>Epilobium ciliatum</i>) and leaves of similar size (in <i>Lolium temulentum</i>) as demethylated offspring of balanced parents when grown under similar conditions. These results demonstrate that transgenerational plasticity (TGP) to N-limitation can potentially be adaptive in some annual plants and support that the inheritance of adaptive traits can be mediated by DNA methylation. For other annual plants, however, our results indicate non-adaptive trait responses to the nutrient treatments and mediation of TGP without involvement of DNA methylation.</p>