Adolf F. Korczyk

Variability of three natural populations of Pinus sylvestris L. from different sites of Białowieża Primeval Forest estimated using needle traits

Zmienność trzech naturalnych populacji Pinus sylvestris L. z różnych siedlisk Puszczy Białowieskiej oszacowana cechami igieł Variability of three natural populations of Pinus sylvestris L. from different sites of Białowieża Primeval Forest estimated using needle traits The aim of the study was to determine the intra- and interpopulation variation of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), coming from three natural sites of the Białowieża Primeval Forest. Material for analysis was collected from pine trees in fresh coniferous forest site type - Vaccinio vitis-ideae-Pinetum (Gruszki population), fresh mixed coniferous forest site type - Calamagrostio arundinacea-Piceetum (Topiło population) and in fresh deciduous forest site type - Tilio-Carpinetum (Teremiski population). These sites vary considerably in terms of their fertility and moisture content. Data collected from measurements of 14 morphological and anatomical traits were used for the purpose of statistical analysis. The most important methods applied in this study include the analysis of discriminant variables, Mahalanobis distances between trees together with the minimum spanning trees created on the basis of the shortest Mahalanobis distances, as well as agglomerative clustering using the nearest neighbour method, based on Euclidean distances and the t distribution and the t-Student test. It was found that analyzed populations differ statistically in terms of investigated traits. In fresh coniferous forest (Gruszki population) and in fresh mixed coniferous forest (Topiło population) pine is a dominant or co-dominant species and these two forest site types create optimal development conditions for pine, which is confirmed by the results obtained in this study.