Plants are excellent climate indicators and their macro-remains or pollen accumulating in geological archives serve as recorders of environmental change. In Europe birch trees contribute importantly to Holocene plant successions. They constitute the dwarf species Betula nana and B. humilis,...

The goal of this study is evaluation of the effect of different levels of plant water stress on their subsequent performance in the first growing season after planting. The most noticeable manifestation of current global climate change are more frequent drought periods of greater intensity and...

Bubbles of gas trapped in the xylem during freezing are a major cause of damage for trees growing at high altitudes or latitudes, as the bubbles may cause embolism during thawing. Yet the factors controlling bubble formation upon freeze-thaw cycles remain poorly understood. Especially the size of...

Daily dynamics of leaf (K_L) and soil-to-branch hydraulic conductance (K_S-B) was investigated in silver birch (Betula pendula Roth.) using evaporative flux method in situ: water potential drop was measured with a pressure chamber and evaporative flux was estimated as sap flux density measured with...

Positive sap pressures are produced in the xylem of birch trees in boreal conditions during the time between the thawing of the soil and bud break. During this period, xylem embolisms accumulated during wintertime are refilled with water. The mechanism for xylem sap pressurization and its...

Leaves have to acclimatize to heterogeneous radiation fields inside forest canopies in order to efficiently exploit diverse light conditions. Short-term effects of light quality on photosynthetic gas exchange, leaf water use and hydraulic traits were studied on Betula pendula Roth shoots cut from...

A growing body of evidence suggests that water uptake of plants depends on available N forms. The objective of this study was to investigate tree water flux at different levels of relative humidity (RH) of air, soil N source (ammonium, nitrate), and N contents. Aspen saplings demonstrated lower (p...

Drought events may increase the likelihood that the plant water transport system becomes interrupted by embolism. Yet our knowledge about the temporal frequency of xylem embolism in the field is frequently lacking, as it requires detailed, long-term measurements.We measured xylem embolism...

The fatty acid composition (FAC) of fractions of organic compounds isolated from total lipids (TL) by successive solvents-chloroform, acetone, and methanol, taken as neutral lipids (NL), glycolipids (GL), and phospholipids (PL)-was studied by the phases of the opening of buds in plants of the ...

We hypothesized that solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation would protect silver birch seedlings from the detrimental effects of water stress through a coordinated suite of trait responses, including morphological acclimation, improved control of water loss through gas exchange and hydraulic sufficiency. ...