Intrapopulational variability of Pinus sylvestris L. from Piekielna Góra in respect to cone and needle traits

Abstract

From 37 Scots pine trees in Piekielna Góra the two-year old cones were collected and studied in respect to 14 morphological traits including the setting angle. One-year old cones from the same trees were examined in respect to their setting angle only. The data obtained for two-year old cones were subject to a whole range of multivariate analytical methods, to detect variability between randomly selected trees. Discriminant analysis was performed, Mahalanobis distances between each pair of trees were calculated and their significance was estimated using the Hotelling T² statistics. A minimum spanning tree was constructed on the basis of the shortest Mahalanobis distances while Euklidean distances served to perform cluster analysis. The randomly selected sample of Scots pine population did not show any internal, significantly differentiated groups and variability among the trees was low. Cone dimensions belonged to the most variable traits, but the ratio of cone length to cone width showed the lowest variability. The extensive similarity of the population to the other earlier examined populations of Pinus sylvestris L. from the Kłodzko District, and certain divergencies from the population are demonstrated.