Growth and Water Use Characteristics of Six Eastern North American Oak (Quercus) Species and the Implications for Urban Forestry

Daniel K. Struve; Petra Sternberg; Nick Drunasky; Kurt Bresko; Rico Gonzalez

doi:10.48044/jauf.2006.026

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Figure 1.
(A and B) Seedling water use expressed relative to seedling height: as g water use seedling⁻¹ cm ET⁻¹ day⁻¹ (A) or as height-adjusted water use: g water use seedling⁻¹ cm ET⁻¹ day⁻¹ versus g water use cm⁻¹ height cm ET⁻¹ day⁻¹ in Quercus rubra family 23.
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Figure 2.
Height-adjusted water use expressed relative to individual seedling height in Quercus rubra family 23 (A) Q. macrocarpa family 35 (B) in Quercus palustris family 30 (C).

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Table 1.

Height, morphology, and dry weights of six oak species in experiments 1, 2, and 3.

Experiment no.	Species	n	QMI^{^z}	Height (cm)	Surface area (cm²)		Root length (cm)	Dry weight (g)			Shoot to root ratio
Experiment no.	Species	n	QMI^{^z}	Height (cm)	Leaf	Root	Root length (cm)	Shoot	Root	Total	Shoot to root ratio
1	Q. rubra	10	3 to 4	50.6 b^{^y}	1190.7 ab	457.1 ab	5001.3 b	24.9 b	25.0 b	49.0 b	1.0 a
	Q. shumardii	10	3 to 4	63.1 b	1596.8 b	648.0 b	5436.2 b	22.4 b	17.6 b	40.0 b	1.3 a
	Q. velutina	10	2 to 3	29.6 a	737.8 a	328.6 a	3014.3 a	8.2 a	4.8 a	13.0 a	1.7 b
2	Q. macrocarpa	25	2	31.0 b	634.9 c	168.2 c	1265.2 b	7.3 b	7.7 b	15.0 c	1.1 a
	Q. palustris	25	2	21.1 a	203.2 a	83.2 a	661.4 a	2.4 a	2.2 a	4.6 a	1.1 a
	Q. prinus	25	2	19.3 a	463.1 b	102.7 b	692.4 a	3.8 a	2.7 a	6.5 b	1.4 b
3	Q. macrocarpa	20	3 to 4	43.9 a	1414.4 a	138.0 b	1271.7 b	16.5 a	31.0 b	47.5 b	0.5 a
	Q. prinus	20	3 to 4	81.9 b	1882.5 b	71.2 a	169.4 a	21.5 b	9.5 a	31.0 a	2.3 b

↵^z Quercus morphologic index are for the lag-phase (Hanson et al. 1986).
↵^y Means within an experiment and column followed by different letters are significantly different from each other using the Student-Neuman-Kels test at the ∝ = 0.05 level of significance.

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Table 2.

Water use of six oak species in experiments 1, 2, and 3.

Experiment no.	Species	Water use (g water per day¹)
		Seedling⁻¹	cm⁻¹ height	cm⁻² area
				Leaf	Root
1	Q. rubra			463.2 b^{^z}	9.2 a	0.39 a	1.0 ab
	Q. shumardii	510.6 c	8.1 a	0.32 a	0.8 a
	Q. velutina	353.4 a	11.9b	0.48 b	1.1 b
2	Q. macrocarpa	131.7 b	4.5 a	0.55 a	0.9 a
	Q. palustris	102.3 a	5.1 a	0.60 a	1.5 b
	Q. prinus	103.9 a	5.9 b	0.33 a	0.3 ab
3	Q. macrocarpa	156.2 a	4.3 b	0.12 b	1.3 a
	Q. prinus	163.0 a	2.1 a	0.09 a	2.8 b

↵^z Means within an experiment and column followed by different letters are significantly different from each other using the Waller-Duncan test at the ∝ = 0.05 level of significance.

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Table 3.

Principal component correlation matrixes for Quercus macrocarpa, Q. palustris, and Q. prinus seedlings in experiment 2.

Variable	Component
	Q. macrocarpa			Q. palustris		Q. prinus
	1	2	3	1	2	1	2	3
Height	0.74	−0.34	−0.38	0.83	−0.43	0.82	−0.02	0.03
Leaf area	0.85	−0.11	0.32	0.93	−0.19	0.85	0.47	0.08
Root area	0.83	0.36	−0.3	0.92	0.34	0.89	−0.32	0.16
Dry weight shoot	0.95	−0.07	0.04	0.97	−0.08	0.94	0.27	0.15
Root	0.88	0.31	−0.07	0.92	0.32	0.88	−0.23	0.33
Total plant	0.95	0.15	−0.02	0.97	0.14	0.96	0.08	0.23
Water use seedling⁻¹	0.84	0.13	0.32	0.86	−0.09	0.74	0.56	0.20
cm⁻¹ height	−0.37	0.66	0.65	−0.67	0.49	−0.66	0.35	0.27
cm⁻² leaf area	−0.62	0.53	−0.28	−0.83	0.39	−0.66	0.09	0.67
cm⁻² root area	−0.80	−0.24	0.05	−0.86	−0.10	−0.67	0.41	0.55
Shoot-to-root ratio	0.41	0.82	−0.34	0.23	0.88	−0.36	−0.70	0.55
Cumulative percent of total variation explained	62.0	78.3	86.8	71.5	86.2	62.7	76.8	88.5

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Table 4.

Principal component matrixes for Quercus macrocarpa and Q. prinus seedlings in experiment 3.

Variable	Component
	Q. macrocarpa				Q. prinus
	1	2	3	4	1	2	3
Height	0.90	0.13	−0.26	−0.13	0.14	0.91	−0.26
Leaf area	0.87	0.30	−0.17	−0.17	0.26	0.83	−0.31
Root area	0.40	−0.20	−0.71	0.46	0.80	−0.07	−0.26
Dry weight shoot	0.57	−0.54	0.52	0.31	0.74	0.39	0.50
Root	0.01	−0.89	−0.01	−0.36	0.67	−0.26	0.56
Total plant	0.46	−0.75	−0.42	0.12	0.79	0.06	0.60
Water use seedling⁻¹	0.54	0.64	−0.09	−0.01	−0.37	0.88	0.13
cm⁻¹ height	−0.84	0.26	0.03	0.17	−0.65	−0.08	0.55
cm⁻² leaf area	−0.82	0.08	0.09	0.21	−0.78	0.01	0.55
cm⁻² root area	−0.19	0.54	0.65	−0.40	−0.69	0.64	0.23
Shoot-to-root ratio	0.43	0.45	0.47	0.59	0.40	0.70	0.24
Cumulative percent of total variation explained	37.7	62.9	78.4	88.3	37.6	68.6	85.8

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Table 5.

Water use of three Quercus species in experiment 4.

Species	Family	n	Height (cm)	Water use (g water day⁻¹ cm ET⁻¹)
Species	Family	n	Height (cm)	Seedling	cm height
Q. macrocarpa	25	84	32.4 (15.3)^{^z}	447.1 (174.9)	16.3 (8.4)
	34	93	40.2 (14.2)	388.0 (83.1)	10.7 (3.2)
	species avg.		36.5 (15.1)	391.3 (144.4)	12.7 (7.1)
Q. palustris	20	98	41.7 (25.8)	360.9 (81.9)	10.6 (3.6)
	28	96	64.7 (20.0)	771.7 (223.9)	12.7 (4.0)
	30	76	44.5 (15.8)	597.8 (166.5)	14.8 (6.1)
	species avg.		49.9 (23.9)	552.6 (227.6)	12.6 (5.0)
Q. rubra	21	86	63.9 (31.1)	476.9 (134.6)	9.1 (4.2)
	22	70	26.4 (16.5)	313.6 (90.4)	14.2 (4.6)
	23	94	58.8 (27.5)	483.6 (114.5)	9.8 (4.2)
	24	47	39.6 (17.4)	333.4 (103.5)	9.1 (2.3)
	26	63	38.4 (20.8)	469.5 (146.5)	14.5 (6.0)
	27	98	46.2 (23.0)	475.9 (138.3)	12.7 (6.4)
	29	81	55.2 (23.3)	394.4 (111.8)	7.8 (2.5)
	31	75	40.3 (17.4)	353.7 (99.4)	9.8 (3.3)
	32	89	46.6 (81.6)	412.1 (14.1)	9.8 (3.9)
	33	92	37.0 (21.9)	683.5 (183.4)	24.4 (12.0)
	35	80	54.9 (18.8)	636.8 (234.5)	12.5 (5.0)
	species avg.		46.9 (24.3)	466.4 (176.0)	12.2 (7.4)

↵^z Values within parentheses are the standard deviation of the mean.

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Table 6.

Correlation between height and various water use characteristics for Quercus macrocarpa, Q. palustris, and Q. rubra seedlings in QMI Lag-3 to 4 growth stage (experiment 4).

Species	Family	n	Correlation^{^z}
Species	Family	n	1	2	3
Q. macrocarpa	25	84	0.63^{^y}	−0.02	−0.63
Q. macrocarpa	34	93	0.59	−0.13	−0.81
All families		177	0.44	0.05	−0.66
Q. palustris	20	98	0.72	−0.53	−0.89
	28	96	0.56	0.18	−0.65
	30	76	0.52	0.18	−0.66
All families		250	0.59	0.20	−0.55
Q. rubra	21	86	0.59	−0.16	−0.82
	22	70	0.77	−0.37	−0.80
	23	93	0.68	−0.20	−0.79
	24	47	0.82	−0.18	−0.68
	26	63	0.65	−0.06	−0.71
	27	98	0.38	0.12	−0.78
	29	81	0.71	−0.07	−0.70
	31	75	0.76	−0.21	−0.74
	32	89	0.17	−0.26	−0.81
	33	92	0.72	−0.42	−0.84
	35	80	0.62	−0.26	−0.50
All families		895	0.47	−0.19	−0.62

↵^z Correlations: 1 = height with g water use seedling⁻¹ cm ET⁻¹ day⁻¹; 2 = g water use seedling⁻¹ cm ET¹ day⁻¹ with g water use cm⁻¹ height cm ET¹ day⁻¹; 3 = height with g water use cm⁻¹ height cm ET¹ day⁻¹.
↵^y Correlation coefficients in bold are significant at the 0.05 level.