engleski

The Variability of European Sweet Chestnut According to the Leaf Morphology – a Methodological Approach

Morphometric methods are frequently used to research the variability of forest trees. As in many species of trees the leaves of a single tree mutually differ depending on the type of shoot on which they are, when studying the morphological variability of foliar traits, the type of shoot from which samples are collected is of great importance. The paper presents a methodological approach to the morphometric analysis of the European sweet chestnut leaf, for which leaves from six different types of shoots were used: short fertile and sterile shoots from the sunlit part of the crown, short shoots from the shadow, long fertile and sterile shoots from the sunlit part of the crown and shoots from the stump. The morphometric research was conducted based on eight measured traits of leaves and two derived ratios, using descriptive and multivariate statistical methods. Through the implemented research it was established that the morphological traits of the European sweet chestnut leaf demonstrate a high degree of variability and that leaves within the same tree mutually differ depending on their position on the plant and depending on the type of shoot on which they develop.

morphometric analysis; shoots; fertile; sterile; sunlit; shadow; stump

nije evidentirano