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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Ecophysiology
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2024.1440494
This article is part of the Research Topic The Adaptation, Plasticity and Extinction of Forest Plants to Climate Change: Mechanisms behind the Morphological, Physiological, Phenological and Ecological Traits View all 7 articles

Variation in internode length patterns: A data analysis of internode length and serial number in three bamboo species

Provisionally accepted
Jiewen Tan Jiewen Tan 1Xiaonan Liu Xiaonan Liu 1Qiying Li Qiying Li 1Kehang Ma Kehang Ma 1Weiwei Huang Weiwei Huang 1,2,3*
  • 1 Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
  • 2 University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 3 Yibin Forestry and Bamboo Industry Research Institute, Yibin, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on earth, and its young culms are formed by elongation of internodes. However, the mathematical intricacies of its internode elongation are not well understood. This study investigated the internode length growth of Phyllostachys edulis, Phyllostachys iridescens, and Pseudosasa amabilis at ten different culm height developmental stages (G1-G10). The tempo of internode elongation from the culm base to the tip generally followed a "slow-fast-slow" growth rhythm. The internode length and the serial number relationship showed a right-skewed curve. As the bamboo grows taller, the longest internode moves from the base to the middle of the culm. The relationship between relative internode number (RIN) and relative cumulative internode length (RCIL) displayed a typical S-shaped growth curve. The modified Briè re (MBE) sigmoid equation achieved better goodness-of-fit than the logistic, power, and third-order functions in fitting the RIN-RCIL curves with the smallest average root mean square error (RMSE). The elongation rates of internodes varied not only with the growth of culm height, but also with the position of the bamboo culm from base to tip. In addition, as the bamboo grows in height, more internodes gradually contribute to the culm height growth. At G1 development stage, 24.01-38.23% of the internodes contributed 65.27-73.59% of the culm height, whereas at G10 stage, 49.28-61.07% of the internodes contributed 66.70-78.18% of the culm height. Our findings provide new insights into the mathematical characterization of bamboo internode elongation patterns involved in the rapid culm growth.

    Keywords: internode length, Culm height growth, Modified Briè re equation, Phyllostachys edulis, Phyllostachys iridescens, Pseudosasa amabilis

    Received: 29 May 2024; Accepted: 29 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Tan, Liu, Li, Ma and Huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Weiwei Huang, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China

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