THE VARIATION OF SOME BEECH SOURSES CHARACTERS IN COMPARATIVE CULTURE ALE?D-POIANA FLORILOR-BIHOR

Abstract

In the comparative culture of descent installed at Poiana Florilor, Alesd forest management unit, in the Bihor County, where the study material was composed of 31 descents of beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), representative for 17 European countries, from almost the entire natural area of the species, including Romania, the seedling plants used in the setting up of the culture were two years old and came from the nursery of the Institute of Forest Genetics in Schalembeck, Germany. The culture’s area of settlement was in the G2 zone–the Apuseni Mountains, the Padurea Craiului Mountains, subzone G240-hilly beech woods, while the experimental appliance for the culture was a 3x4 rectangular railing, with three repetitions, completely randomized, each unitary lot covering 10x10 m, and being made up of 50 plants placed on five rows with a 2 meter distancing in between and 1 meter distance within the row. Measuring and observations were performed 5 years after planting and the following features were taken into account: survival (%), total height (cm), base diameter (cm) and forking (indices). The values measured in percents were transformed in arc sin √x, the rest of the results being processed by means of statistical mathematics. The statistic parameters for performing a study regarding inter-population variation of the various measured or observed features were determined, leading to the conclusion that, when it comes to adaptive features, namely survival, the variation of this character was large, whereas for the quantitative features of the trunk, the inter-population genetic variation was very large, thus the amplitude of variation of the specimens was very different from one descent to the other, varying from very narrow to very large, being, therefore, a different inter-population genetic variation. As to some qualitative features of the trunk, namely forking, the inter-population variation was very large, none of the descents comprising only non-forked trees. The Romanian descents used in the comparative culture, namely 72-Bihor-Izbuc-Romania presented values of the analyzed features that surpass the average of the experiment, except for total height, where the local descent had values high above the average for this feature.