Fibre wall and lumen fractions drive wood density variation across 24 Australian angiosperms

By Kasia Ziemińska, D. Butler, S. Gleason, I. Wright, M. Westoby. AoB Plants, 2013

179 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Wood density is often considered to be a key plant functional trait. But it is not clear what actually wood density is? We rigorously quantified anatomical underpinnings of wood density variation. We found that density was mainly driven by properties of mechanical tissue such as fibre wall fraction and fibre lumen fraction. However, there was also a substantial anatomical variation independent of density. This variation suggests that different plant ecological strategies may be available to woods with the same density. Our results imply that density is a complex characteristic of wood rather than a straightforward indicator of plant ecological strategies.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Mechanical Engineering, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/abb20626f4d480953e111c359903d1b288167169

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Global and Planetary Change

1. S. Jansen
2. Shaun R. Levick
3. Jens Kattge
4. Bettina M. J. Engelbrecht
5. S. Landhäusser

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. Shaun R. Levick
2. Jens Kattge
3. Bettina M. J. Engelbrecht
4. S. Landhäusser

Citations in the corpus

• Drought tolerance as predicted by leaf water potential at turgor loss point varies strongly across species within an Amazonian forest (2015, unknown): “appears to be less related to hydraulic function estimated from wood vessel anatomy and more closely associated with biomechanical support as estimated by wood fibre composition (Fortunel et al. 2014; see also Chave et al. 2009; Zanne et al. 2010; Zieminska et al. 2013).”
• A synthesis of tree functional traits related to drought-induced mortality in forests across climatic zones (2017, background): “This trait is relatively easy to measure and is useful because of its correlation with fibre wall thickness (Ziemi nska et al. 2013) and potentially other vessel/xylem anatomy traits that influence tolerance to low stem water potentials.”