Relationships between leaf traits and morphological attributes in one-year bareroot Fraxinus angustifolia Vahl. seedlings

Abstract

Leaf traits were investigated as morphological attributes for quality estimation of one-year-old bareroot seedlings of Fraxinus angustifolia Vahl. Leaf traits (number of simple-NSL and compound leaves-NCL, leaf average-ALA and total area-TLA and leaf area ratio-LAR) show similar relations to morphological attributes, the strongest to shoot growth (height-HT, root collar diameter-DIA and shoot dry weight-SDW). Increases of seedling morphological attributes are strongly related to increases of ALA. Given to strong positive correlations with other morphological attributes, ALA (R = 0.68-0.88) and TLA (R = 0.46-0.92) are suitable for seedlings quality testing. TLA explained a larger proportion of the variation of SDW (R2= 0.85) and ALA explained a large proportion of the variation of DIA (R2= 0.81). Leaf traits can be considered as valuable morphological attributes of seedling quality, in addition to strong correlation with other morphological attributes.