Adaptation strategies of leaf traits and leaf economic spectrum in urban garden plants

Abstract In order to explore the adaptation strategies of urban garden plants leaf traits and the relationship of different life forms to climate zone. In this study, we used Mudanjiang of Heilongjiang Province and Bozhou of Anhui Province as the research sites, 17 and 9 woody garden plants were selected respectively, measured 7 leaf morphological characters and 4 photosynthetic pigment contents. One way ANOVA was used to reveal the variation characteristics of leaf functional traits of trees, shrubs and vines in two urbans. Two-way ANOVA was used to reveal the plant leaf traits under climate and life form. Pearson correlation analysis and principal component analysis was used to calculate the correlation coefficient between leaf functional traits of plants in the two places. Leaf dry matter content (LDMC) and Vein density (VD) of different life forms in Mudanjiang were higher than Bozhou (P < 0.05), the Relative water content (RWC) in Bozhou was higher, while Vein density (VD) of trees and shrubs in two urbans were significant ((P < 0.05), but the vine was not significant. The tree and shrub species photosynthetic pigments were larger in Mudanjiang, but it was opposite in vines. Both leaf vein density (VD) and stomatal density (SD) showed a very significant positive correlation in two nrbans (P < 0.01), and both were significantly positively correlated with specific leaf area (SLA) (P < 0.05), negatively correlated with leaf thickness (LT), and the relationship between pigment content were closer. The response was obvious differences in leaf traits of different life forms species in urban to climate, but the correlations between the traits showed convergence, which reflects that the adaptation strategies of garden plant leaves to different habitats are both coordinated and relatively independent.