Tree Growth Response Systems

Tree growth and development are dependent upon a few basic mechanisms. These mechanisms are responsible for the tree making holistic adjustments to a changing external environment. These basic mechanisms also allow for correlation of processes internally. One means of understanding tree reactivity to external and internal changes can be partially visualized in shoot/root interactions. Once the basic mechanisms of how whole trees react to change are delineated, additional impacts such as pruning, fertilization, drought, etc. can be better understood.

Trees are complex organisms with highly evolved sense and response systems. Because the tree as a whole is too complex to comprehend at a functional level, simplified models are used to understand tree reactions to change. Reviewed here, in a very basic manner, will be how trees control their own growth and how this growth control changes internal resource allocation patterns.

(This publication is a synthesis of the tree growth regulation and correlation literature. General processes and systems presented here represent educational models which professionals can use to better appreciate and understand basic tree functions. These models do not represent actual physiological mechanisms, but simple theoretical means of explaining tree reactions within the environment.)

(FOR98-006) January 1998

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