Question: What is the effect of gap size on the seedling emergence, growth and survival of four common tree species in wooded pastures? Location: A pasture in the Jura mountains, Switzerland. Methods: Seeds were sown in a complete three-way factorial design with eight blocks in May 2003. Each block consisted of a competition treatment (four gap sizes including zero) and a mowing treatment (mown...

Light-related plasticity of crown morphology and within-crown characteristics were investigated in understory sun and shade saplings of three codominant subalpine conifers, Abies mariesii M.T. Mast., Abies veitchii Lindl. and Picea jezoensis var. hondoensis (Mayr) Rehd. Compared with those of sun saplings, current-year shoots of shade saplings allocated less biomass to needles, resulting in les...

The bending and growth characteristics of large fresh stems from four silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) and three Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) trees were studied. Twenty logs taken from different stem heights were subjected to four-point bending tests. From the bending test records, we calculated stress-strain curves, which accounted for detailed log taper, shear deformation and self wei...

Deadwood is an important biodiversity hotspot in forest ecosystems. While saproxylic insects and wood-inhabiting fungi have been studied extensively, little is known about deadwood-inhabiting bacteria. The study we present is among the first to compare bacterial diversity and community structure of deadwood under field conditions. We therefore compared deadwood logs of two temperate forest tree...

Shoots of Picea abies (Norwegian spruce) are traditional material for syrup production in the small and medium sized food industry in Northern Finland. The shoot products are believed to be beneficial to one’s health because of their purity and nutritional value, e.g. high mineral, ascorbic acid and flavonoid content. They are also valued for their essential oil content and the forest aroma. In...

The conifer needle scale, Nuculaspis abietis (Schrank) emerged as an important pest of conifers in the Kelardasht region of Mazandaran province, Iran, in the late 1990’s. This pest feeds on conifer needles and twigs causing needle drop and branch desiccation. Its discovery in Kelardasht in Mazandaran Province necessitated a local quarantine of conifers in the genera Picea, Abies, and Pinus. We ...

Tannin extracts were prepared from barks of maritime pine (Pinus maritimus), aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis), Norway spruce (Picea abies) and from a mixture of barks of different pine species (Pinus spp., namely 20% black pine (Pinus thunbergii)+ 30% Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) + 20% maritime pine (Pinus maritimus) + 10% Aleppo Pine (Pinus halepensis) + 5% Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) +...

The effect of demographic history on patterns of polymorphism at a locus can seriously impede the detection of selection. Sliding window analysis of Tajima’s D was performed on sequence data available for Picea abies. The distribution of Tajima’s D was compared to coalescent simulations of different demographic scenarios. A growth model including some population differentiation was found to exp...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS During embryo development in most gymnosperms, the establishment of the shoot apical meristem (SAM) occurs concomitantly with the formation of a crown of cotyledons surrounding the SAM. It has previously been shown that the differentiation of cotyledons in somatic embryos of Picea abies is dependent on polar auxin transport (PAT). In the angiosperm model plant, Arabidopsis t...