WOOD ANATOMY AND ITS RELATION TO PLANT SIZE AND LATITUDE IN BUDDLEJA L. (BUDDLEJACEAE)

摘要

Wood anatomy of the genus Buddleja was studied to gain insight about its relationship with habit and latitude. Habit was positively associated with most characteristics, showing the highest correlation coefficients with vessel element length and fibre length. Four features were negatively correlated with latitude, confirming observations for other taxa and only ray width was positively correlated. Wood has a discrete variation among habit categories as revealed by canonical discriminant analysis. Moreover, variance analysis confirmed significant differences in fibre length and vessel element length between species that are small shrubs and trees taller than 10m. These results suggest that Buddleja species growing in harsher environments, as the small shrubs, show less variation in wood cell size, while species growing in more diverse environments may have more diverse habits and consequently greater wood cell size variation.