Intra and interspecific analysis of the wood of two dioecious species of the restingas of Southeastern Brazil

Abstract

Comparative studies of dioecious plants are still rare in the literature although they are considered of great importance for understanding the genetic variability within a species, the spatial colonization of plants in stressful environments, and differences in resource allocation for reproductive and vegetative growth, for example. Clusia fluminensis Planch. & Triana and Schinus terebinthifolia Raddi are woody, dioecious and native species of the restinga of Southeast Brazil. In this study, we described and compared the wood anatomy of pistillate flower-bearing sporophytes and staminate flower-bearing sporophytes of these species. There were no qualitative differences between sporophyte types of either species, which allowed a single taxonomical description for each of them and corroborates the homogeneity of the features analysed at the specific level. However, six of the 23 quantitative features statistically analysed differed significantly (p < 0,05) different between the sporophyte types in Clusia fluminensis, while in Schinus terebinthifolia, three quantitative features are significantly different. Eleven of the quantitative features of wood anatomy have similar patterns of variation between the two sporophyte types in the two species, eight of which are smaller in the pistillate flower-bearing sporophytes.