This study addresses relationships between leaf phenology, xylogenesis, and functional xylem anatomy in two ring-porous oak species, the temperate Quercus robur and the sub-Mediterranean Q. pyrenaica. Earlywood vessel (EV) formation and leaf phenology were monitored in 2012 and 2013. Ten individuals per species were sampled at each of three sites located in NW Iberian Peninsula. EV areas measur...

Green-leaf phenology describes the development of vegetation throughout a growing season and greatly affects the interaction between climate and the biosphere. Remote sensing is a valuable tool to characterize phenology over large areas but doing at fineto medium resolution (e.g., with Landsat data) is difficult because of low numbers of cloud-free images in a single year. One way to overcome d...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The collection of field data on plant traits is time consuming and this makes it difficult to examine changing patterns of traits along large-scale climate gradients. The present study tests whether trait information derived from regional floras can be used in conjunction with pre-existing quadrat data on species presence to derive meaningful relationships between specific m...

Kawakawa (Macropiper excelsum) is an understorey, forest tree which sustains conspicuous and substantial herbivory from the larvae of a geometrid moth, Cleora scriptaria. This study examined the relationship between leaf abscission and the amount of damage a leaf had sustained. In the field, kawakawa trees showed no increase in the rate of leaf shedding in response to experimental damage by C. ...

Many trees of tropical dry forests flower or form new shoots soon after leaf shedding during the dry season, i.e., during a period when trees are likely to be severely water stressed. To resolve this apparent paradox, phenology and seasonal changes in tree water status were monitored during two consecutive dry seasons in > 150 trees of 37 species growing at different sites in the tropical dry l...

Monitoring cambial phenology and intra-annual growth dynamics is a useful approach for characterizing the tree growth response to climate change. However, there have been few reports concerning intra-annual wood formation in lowland temperate forests with high time resolution, especially for the comparison between deciduous and coniferous species. The main objective of this study was to determi...

By the end of this century, mean annual temperatures in the Northeastern United States are expected to warm by 3–5 °C, which will have significant impacts on the structure and function of temperate forests in this region. To improve understanding of these impacts, we exploited two recent climate anomalies to explore how the springtime phenology of Northeastern temperate deciduous forests will r...

Anthropogenic climate change has altered temperate forest phenology, but how these trends will play out in the future is controversial. We measured the effect of experimental warming of 0.6-5.0 °C on the phenology of a diverse suite of 11 plant species in the deciduous forest understory (Duke Forest, North Carolina, USA) in a relatively warm year (2011) and a colder year (2013). Our primary goa...

Whole!plant responses to elevated CO1 throughout the life cycle are needed to understand future impacts of elevated atmospheric CO1[ In this study\ Triticum aes! tivum L[ leaf carbon exchange rates "CER# and carbo! hydrates\ growth\ and development were examined at the tillering\ booting\ and grain!_lling stages in growth chambers with CO1 concentrations of 249 "ambient# or 699 "high# mmol mol[...