“…Two main patterns could explain differential responses in plant development between whole‐plant structure and module responses (the term ‘module’ refers in this paper to a structural unit repeated over time and composed of a dominant axis and its lateral subordinates axes): first, similar modules can be organized in different ways, producing organisms with different forms, functions and ecological behaviours (Edelin , Hallé et al , White , Oldeman , Millet et al , Preston and Ackerly , Barthélémy and Caraglio , Kawamura ); second, the successive modules in a structure are only rarely equivalent to one another because of modifications during plant ontogeny, through a process called ‘ontogenic drift’ or ‘morphogenetic gradient’ (Nozeran et al , Evans , Coleman et al , Barthélémy and Caraglio ), which leads the same organism to occupy a series of different niches over the course of its life cycle (Young et al , Niinemets ). These two patterns can also interact with phenotypic plasticity: 1) phenotypic plasticity can either have an effect independent from ontogenic drift or produce confounding effects, for example, by modifying the plant growth rate or its ontogenetic program (Coleman et al , Kawamura and Takeda , Wright and McConnaughay ); 2) a strong positional effect of modules within the whole‐plant structure determines their functions and plastic response abilities (Winn , Grosfeld et al , Benot et al , Charles‐Dominique et al , ). While refining the description of these patterns is considered key to explaining species success, very few quantitative studies have focused specifically on the requirements of long‐lived species after their juvenile stage (Wright and McConnaughay , Poorter et al ).…”