Abstract
Platanus orientalis L. var. cretica is the ever-growing mutant of Platanus orientalis L. (plane tree) and its population consists of few trees, growing in isolation on the island of Crete, in the Aegean Archipelago of Greece, while the typical plane tree form is ubiquitous to the island and mainly present in streams and ravines. In the present study, 23 mutant and adjacent typical plane tree pairs were studied. Four leaf morphometry parameters were measured using the ImageJ software in order to derive five independent of size leaf shape ratios. Paired comparisons using Kruskal-Wallis tests were conducted via the SPSS software. The analyses showed no general tendency of statistically significant differences regarding studied parameters between pairs. Statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) in the majority of the analyzed ratios were detected in 35% of the studied pairs. Our results show that the leaf morphometrics present notable phenotypic variation which can be valuable in diversity studies. Nevertheless, they are not particularly useful in distinguishing P. orientalis L. and the ever-growing P. orientalis L. var. cretica.
Supplementary Materials
The presentation material of this work is available online at https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/IECF2022-13091/s1.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, F.A.A.; Methodology, F.A.A., A.D.; Software, F.A.A., I.V.; Writing-original draft preparation, I.V., F.A.A.; Writing-review and editing, I.V., N.T., A.-M.F., A.D., F.A.A.; Supervision, F.A.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
The research was partially supported by project Crown Genome, funded by the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation, Greece and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement
Raw data will become available at the Dryad Digital Repository upon completion of this study.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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