FOREST DIFFERENTIATION AND ECOLOGICAL,ARCHITECTURAL TYPES OF EVERGREEN BROAD-LEAVED TREES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO LEAF TRAITS

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The community differentiation, and ecological, architectural traits of evergreen broad-leaved forests which derived from tropical montane forest zones were investigated with special reference to the leaf, bud, and branching traits of the component evergreen broad-leaved trees at their northern latitudinal limit areas in southern and central Japan. Forest types were differentiated along topoedaphological gradients along landforms of the ridge-slope-valley complex in Yakushima. Forest stratification was of particularly important for the structural making up of the forest, i.e., canopy and understory. Bud structural types, leaf dynamics, branching pattern, and tree architecture are all correlatively differentiated among those tree groups related to forest stratification, which in turn affected by environmental constraints including climate and topo-edaphological factors. New system of bud typification, i.e., naked, hypsophyllary, and scaled, was devised to categorize evergreen broad-leaved trees of tropical origin, which is intimately correlated with other growth traits of the tree groups. Accordingly, we have proposed a new project focused on branching and shoot growth architecture of evergreen broad-leaved trees to understand forest structure in the northern limit areas of the tropical montane forests in southern and central Japan.