Drought stress is becoming increasingly common with climate change, with negative impacts on tree growth and survival. The mechanisms of drought mortality in trees are often attributed to carbon starvation or hydraulic failure, however disease and herbivory could also cause mortality under drought. For this to happen, tree defense systems against pathogens and herbivores would […]

Phloem is a crucial tissue in trees, responsible for transporting carbon and cycling of nutrients throughout the plant. However, there is comparatively little information on phloem physiology compared to other tissues. That is why Tree Physiology has dedicated an entire issue to phloem physiology. While the xylem is responsible for transporting water from the roots […]

In plants, respiration is usually inhibited in the light compared to the dark. Measuring respiration in the light is particularly difficult, because photosynthesis and photorespiration are occurring as well. Understanding how light respiration changes with temperature is crucial for predicting how ecosystem-level CO2 exchange will respond to climate change, which can feed back and amplify […]

Understanding how forests grow and how they metabolize carbon is crucial to ecosystem carbon flux, feedbacks between vegetation and climate, and the forestry. However, a key question remains unanswered: how is carbon metabolism converted into growth in trees? Respiration (the breakdown of carbon compounds for energy) provides the resources for a plant to drive growth […]

Plants secrete carbon compounds into soils through their roots, affecting microbes in such a way that nutrient availability in the soil can increase. This root exudation can cost over 10% of the carbon fixed through photosynthesis, but this cost is thought to be largely offset by the benefits of altering soil microbial activity. Given the […]

McAllister et al. demonstrate the utility of rh-qPCR to quantify ophiostomoid fungi in situ from MPB and pine DNA extracts

It might seem romantic, but the last thing a tree wants is an embrace under mistletoe.

What is it that gives bamboo its rapid growth? One team has been looking for the answer not with the fastest plants, but with the slower variants to see what they lack.

Joseph Stinziano investigates how something you might find in jam controls how easily trees open or close access their leaves.

Water flows down, so how can even the tallest trees draw it up to the top of the canopy?

Evergreen conifers face a unique challenge during winter: it is too cold for photosynthesis, but their leaves still absorb light energy. This can be dangerous to leaf tissues if the absorbed light energy is not dissipated. Plants can get rid of excess light energy absorbed by light harvesting complexes through the xanthophyll cycle, whereby a […]

Trees can face significant threats from herbivores, particularly ones that defoliate (i.e. eat leaves and reduce leaf area). After being attacked by defoliators, trees can respond by changing their growth patterns and producing defence chemicals. In extreme cases, trees are unable to mount an effective response to defoliation, killing the tree. On a forest-wide scale, […]