International audienceStudies on the periodicity of wood formation provide essential data on tree age and factors related to the control of tree growth. The aim of this work was to investigate the cambial phenology and its relation with leaf phenology and climatic seasonality in two tropical rainforest species belonging to the genus Parkia known for having a contrasted leaf phenology. From wood samples collected at 15 day intervals from April 2009 to February 2012 in five trees of both species, we quantified cambial activity by counting layers of cells in cambial zone, enlarging cells zone and wall thickening cells zone from wood prepared anatomical micro sections. In the same time, we observed leaf shedding behaviors in the crown of the studied trees. In both species, cambial activity was significantly reduced during leafless period. However, the cambial activity of P. velutina was not affected by seasonality while in P. nitida, we found a significant positive effect of the dry season on cambial activity. This diminution of activity associated to leaf shedding occurred annually during the dry season in P. nitida whereas the trees were not synchronous in time for P. velutina. On the contrary that is often admitted, the rest cambial period can be independent of environmental restriction such as dry season. Leaf phenology remains the best proxy to estimate cambial activity
Although the leaf economic spectrum has deepened our understanding of leaf trait variability, little is known about how leaf traits scale with leaf area. This uncertainty has resulted in the assumption that leaf traits should vary by keeping the same pace of variation with increases in leaf area across the leaf size range. We evaluated the scaling of morphological, tissue-surface and vascular traits with overall leaf area, and the functional significance of such scaling. We examined 1,271 leaves for morphological traits, and 124 leaves for anatomical and hydraulic traits, from 38 trees of Cecropia obtusa Trécul (Urticaceae) in French Guiana. Cecropia is a Neotropical genus of pioneer trees that can exhibit large laminas (0.4 m2 for C. obtusa), with leaf size ranging by two orders of magnitude. We measured (i) tissue fractions within petioles and their second moment of area, (ii) theoretical xylem hydraulic efficiency of petioles and (iii) the extent of leaf vessel widening within the hydraulic path. We found that different scaling of morphological trait variability allows for optimisation of lamina display among larger leaves, especially the positive allometric relationship between lamina area and petiole cross-sectional area. Increasing the fraction of pith is a key factor that increases the geometrical effect of supportive tissues on mechanical rigidity and thereby increases carbon-use efficiency. We found that increasing xylem hydraulic efficiency with vessel size results in lower leaf lamina area: xylem ratios, which also results in potential carbon savings for large leaves. We found that the vessel widening is consistent with hydraulic optimisation models. Leaf size variability modifies scaling of leaf traits in this large-leaved species.
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