Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov Series II: Forestry • Wood Industry • Agricultural Food Engineering • Vol. 7 (56) No. 1 - 2014 MORPHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN ROMANIAN LIME SPECIES (TILIA SPP.): A CASE STUDY P. IVANOV1 C. LOGHIN2 C.M. ENESCU3 Abstract: Three lime species are known to occur in Romania: Tilia cordata, T. platyphyllos and T. tomentosa. The aim of this study iss to highlight the morphological traits which differentiate the three species by using Discriminant Analysis. One hundred fifty lime individuals were sampled and eleven leaf and twig descriptors were assessed. The results of this multivariate statistical analysis confirmed the high discriminating power of certain traits. Abaxial laminal pubescence, lamina length and bud pubescence were the variables that separate the three species and were used to develop three discriminant functions. Key words: lime, Tilia, morphological descriptors, Discriminant Analysis 1. Introduction morphological assessment was done in Romania. In general, woody plants can be easily Genus Tilia L. belongs to the family identified by certain morphological traits Tiliaceae Juss. (Order Malvales Juss.). It is that are species-specific. But in many represented by economic and ecological cases, for example in species-rich genus important tree species. like Quercus L., morphological In Europe, only four lime species occur differentiation between closely related tree naturally, namely Tilia cordata Mill. species is difficult to assess [4], [5], [10]. (small-leaved lime), T. platyphyllos Scop. Another example is genus Tilia L., which (large-leaved lime), T. tomentosa Moench. includes, according to different authors, (silver lime) and T. dasystyla Stev. between 25 and 50 tree species native (Caucasian lime) [21]. The first three of throughout the temperate northern them are also present in Romania, where hemisphere, in Asia, Europe and North besides their multiple ecological and America [6], [17], [21], [23]. silvicultural roles they are also very Recently, several studies [7], [19], [22], appreciated for their ornamental value [32], [33] were carried out for lime species [16]. Among them, in our country, the (Tilia spp.) in order to assess their most widespread is small-leaved lime [24], morphological variability by using while the less common in large-leaved different descriptors, especially leaf traits. lime [27]. By contrast, no detailed leaf and/or twig 1 Master Student, Faculty of Agriculture, Bucharest. 2 Forest Research and Management Institute, Bucharest. 3 Dept. of Soil Sciences, University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Bucharest. 22 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Series II • Vol. 7 (56) No. 1 - 2014 Small-leaved lime can be found on The minimum distance between the trees plains of approximately 900 m elevation was about thirty meters. [25]. Its longevity is around 200 years Species identification was done [25], but according to recent according to morphological descriptions determinations, T. cordata can reach from specialized manuals [6], [18], [20], around 300 years old [28]. [27]. Almost half of the sampled trees (108 According to several studies, many lime individuals) presented intermediate species can hybridize [14], [15], [22], [31] morphology (putative hybrids?). and in these cases species differentiation is Therefore, in order not to include the difficult to assess [33]. For example, in above mentioned individuals in the Romania seven lime hybrids are known to analysis and to construct three equal occur [23]. groups corresponding to the three species, A right identification of a species sensu only fifty lime individuals corresponding lato can be done by taking into to each species were chosen for performing consideration relevant morphological the morphological analysis. Thus, three to descriptors recommended by the literature five leaves, three or four buds and one to and by using several multivariate analyses. three twigs were sampled from every tree. One of the most used multivariate In order to assess the morphological statistical techniques for species variability of the three lime species, eleven differentiation which provided good results descriptors were used. in similar morphological studies dealing For each leaf, four dimensional with closely related species is Discriminant characters, namely lamina length (LL), Analysis [8], [11], [12], [13]. maximum lamina width (LW), length of The objective of this study is to evaluate lamina from base to widest point (WP) and the leaf, bud and twig morphology of the petiole length (PL), were measured autochthonous lime species, namely T. (Figure 1). cordata, T. platyphyllos and T. tomentosa. Secondly, three easy to use discriminant functions for lime species identification were constructed. 2. Materials and Methods Plant material (undamaged and fully developed twigs, buds and leaves) was collected from two mixed lime stands in the autumn of 2013. From the first stand, located in Cocani Forest, Dâmboviţa County (N44,62182; E25,88087), 180 individuals were sampled, while from the second one, located in Babadag Forest, Tulcea County Fig. 1. Description of the dimensional leaf (N44,87982; E28,72131), only 90 lime traits trees were sampled. All three species were represented in both sampled stands, but in In addition, two observed variables, i.e. different proportions. In total, there were abaxial laminal pubescence (LP) and basal sampled 270 individuals. shape of the lamina (BS), were assessed. P. IVANOV et al: Morphological Differentiation between Romanian Limes (Tilia spp.) … 23 Abaxial laminal pubescence (LP) was Basal shape of the lamina (BS) was assessed at the leaf vein axils level, scored as an index varying from 1 to 9, especially at the bottom of the leaf as according to the angle of the basal part of shown in Figure 2 by the red arrows. It lamina. So, if the value of the angle was was scored as an index as follows: 1 – no less than 20 then BS was 1, if the value tufts of hairs in the leaf vein axils, 2 – big was between 21 and 40, BS was 2, a.s.o. tufts of reddish-brown hairs in the leaf vein For twig morphological assessment two axils and 3 – white or yellow hairs in the variables were taken into consideration, leaf vein axils. namely twig color (TC) and twig pubescence (TP). Twig color was scored as follows: 1: green, 2: brown-reddish and 3: grey (Fig. 3). Fig. 3. Twig color assessment In the case of the second twig trait, only two values were used, namely 1 (glabrous twigs) and 2 (pubescent twigs). Regarding the buds, three traits were assessed: number of scales (NS), bud length (BL) and bud pubescence (BP). For bud pubescence, the same scale as for twig pubescence was used, namely 1 (glabrous buds) and 2 (pubescent buds). In the case of pubescence assessment, naked-eye evaluation was used. In the case of the five dimensional leaf and bud traits (LL, LW, WP, PL and BL) the measurements were made with a digital slide caliper with accuracy of 0.01 mm, model HW0812-4311. Afterwards, morphological data were processed with STATISTICA software v.8.0 and mean values, standard deviations and coefficients of variation for every morphological descriptor were calculated. Discriminant Analysis was carried out Fig. 2. Description of the abaxial laminar with the same software and Forward pubescence stepwise method with tolerance 0.01 was used. 24 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Series II • Vol. 7 (56) No. 1 - 2014 3. Results and Discussions morphology, according to Romanian Dendrological literature [3], [6], [9], [20], Mean and standard deviation values of [25], [27], the standard deviations for the eleven assessed morphological traits abaxial laminal pubescence (LP) were are given in Table 1 (150 trees, 50 almost 0.0. The same remark is also valid individuals for each lime species). for morphological descriptor number of Except the value for BS in the case of T. scales (NS). tomentosa, the values for the coefficient of variation were below 30%, which means Table 1 that the mean is representative for the data Mean and standard deviation (SD) values set. of morphological descriptors Regarding leaf dimensional traits, it can Lime species be seen that T. platyphyllos had the biggest leaves, followed by T. tomentosa and T. cordata. This is in accordance with the Descriptor data from Romanian [2], [3], [6], [9], [27], [30] and Italian [1] literature. Statistics T. cordata Lamina length ranged from 65.1 to 89.8 tomentosa T. T. platyphyllos platyphyllos T. mm in the case of small-leaved lime, from 67.2 to 149.7 mm for large-leaved lime Mean 78.1 104.0 91.7 LL [mm] and from 70.1 to 127.4 mm for silver lime, SD 6.9 17.1 13.3 respectively. Mean 74.3 97.2 90.6 In the case of T. cordata, according to LW [mm] our results, bigger leaves were identified SD 8.7 19.0 14.6 compared with the ones measured in a Mean 25.9 33.8 30.6 WP [mm] study made in Timişoara city [26]. This SD 3.5 6.6 5.5 could be explained by the fact that the trees Mean 34.8 44.9 42.5 located inside the cities, in polluted areas, PL [mm] SD 8.1 7.3 9.5 have smaller leaves that the ones situated Mean 2.0 2.9 1.0 outside the cities. This was demonstrated LP in a study carried out recently on limes SD 0.1 0.2 0.0 [29]. Mean 4.6 5.3 4.7 BS Leaf shape resulted as the ratio between SD 1.3 1.4 1.5 lamina length (LL) and lamina width (LW) Mean 1.8 1.7 3.0 combined with the position of LW along TC the LL. In our study, this ratio was close to SD 0.5 0.5 0.0 Mean 1.1 1.1 2.0 1 for all three species, so that the overall TP shape of the leaf was more or less round.