Growth, biomass, leaf area and water-use efficiency of juvenile Pinus radiata in response to water deficits

New Zealand Journal of Forestry Science

Table 3 Crown characteristics at the end of the experiment

	Well-watered	Early-season drought	Late-season drought	Summer drought	*Analysis of variance* treatment
No. of whorls	2.3 (0.1) a	2.3 (0.1) a	2.3 (0.1) a	2.2 (0.1) a	0.49^ns
Internode length (cm)	61.8 (3.1) a	58.3 (3.1) ab	60.0 (2.2) ab	50.6 (3.0) b	3.29^ns
Branches per whorl	7.6 (0.2) ab	6.8 (0.2) a	7.6 (0.2) ab	7.7 (0.2) b	3.89*
Branch diameter (cm)	7.8 (0.2) a	6.3 (0.2) b	6.4 (0.2) b	4.9 (0.1) c	45.8***
Branch length (cm)	40.3 (1.9) a	29.2 (1.3) b	31.3 (1.7) b	20.8 (1.3) c	44.2***
Needle length (cm)	12.9 (0.4) a	12.1 (0.2) a	12.1 (0.5) a	10.3 (0.3) b	10.6***
Fascicles per tree	2643 (404) a	2297 (167) a	1704 (123) a	1547 (290) b	3.61*
Litterfall (grams)	5.0 (0.7) ab	1.9 (0.3) b	6.9 (1.1) a	7.1 (1.3) a	9.31**

Each value is the treatment mean with standard error in parentheses for 24 trees, except for needle length which is for 6 trees. The Tukey HSD test was performed between treatments. Means followed by the same letter are not significantly different at P < 0.05. Significance of treatment effects is shown as F value followed by P category: ^nsnon-significant; *significant at P < 0.05; **significant at P < 0.01; ***significant at P < 0.001.