ABSTRACT
The difference in leaf stable carbon isotope discrimination (delta) of 18 representative Schima superba provenances was investigated based on three provenance trails located at Jian' ou of Fujian Province and Chun' an and Qingyuan of Zhejiang Province, and the geographic variation pattern and the effects of trial site and provenances growth rate were studied. Significant differences in leaf delta were observed among the provenaces, and the differences in leaf delta value between the highest and lowest provenances reached 6.9%, 3.0%, and 3.7% in 3 experimental sites, respectively. A classic latitudinal clinical variation pattern was found, because there were significant correlations between the leaf delta value and the latitude of seed sources in all the 3 sites while no significant correlations were observed between the leaf delta value and the longitude of the seed sources. The southern provenances showed higher leaf delta value than the northern provenances, indicating that the water use efficiency (WUE) was lower in southern provenances. The leaf delta value of different provenances was demonstrated to be greatly affected by the environment of trial sites. The leaf delta value increased significantly with the improvement of site environment and with the increase of annual rainfall. Significant positive correlations were observed between the leaf delta value and the growth traits including tree height, DBH, total number of lateral branches, and length of the strongest lateral branch, which indicated that the provenances with higher growth rate and denser crown had larger leaf delta value. Two and four superior provenances with high growth rate and low leaf delta value (or high WUE) were selected for Jian' ou of Fujian and Chun' an of Zhejiang, respectively.