Provenance Differentia tion of Seedling Character istics of Taxus ch inens isvar. m a ire r and Its Seedling Ra ising Env ironment Influence

Taxus chinensis var. m airer p rovenance trails including twenty-seven seed sources from ten p rovinces of p rimary natural distribution zone, located atMingxi of Fujian and Chun’an of Zhejiang, were used to study p rovenancevariation for seedling characteristics such as seedling growth, shoot elongation parameters, root character and drymatter accumulation and influence of seedling raising environment. The results indicated that there existed significantdifferences among p rovenances for seedling height, root collar diameter and branch number. Analysis of shoot elongation parameter demonstrated that increase of p rovenance seeding heightwas attributed to the acceleration of total lineargrowth (TLG) , maximun growth rate (MGR) and linear growth rate (LGR) , but the p rolongation of linear growth day (LGD). Comparing with other forest species, Taxus chinensis var. m airer had the lowerLGR and the longerLGD. Thep rovenance variation of rootmorphology and drymatter accumulation could not reach significant level in statistics, butthe biggest value was above twenty percentage more than the lowest one. There wasmarked effect of the seedling raising environment on the p rovenance growth. Good nursery site and suitable shading could enhance growth of seedlingheight and root collar diameter. It was found that there existed significant p rovenance by site interaction and smallp rovenance by shading interaction. The geographical variation patterns of Taxus chinensis var. m airer seedling heightand root collar diameter were different in various seedling raising site. At Mingxi of Fujian, p rovenance seedlinggrowth was not related to the geography-climate factors of its seed source. The p rovenances with higher growth ratewere distributed not only in the eastern and northern zone but also in the southern and western one. At Chun’an ofZhejiang, the eastern and northern p rovenance had higher seedling height and root collar diameter, contrasting to p rovenances from the southern and western, which was similar to the result founded by the authors in the former limiteddistribution-area p rovenance trial.