Résumé
In a recent study based on a retrospective reconstruction of growth, we showed for Cecropia sciadophylla that branching and flowering processes, as well as alternation of long and short nodes were regularly spaced by ~23 nodes. We also found that this strong periodicity was related to an annual cycle of growth. Adult trees are successful individuals that have reached the canopy and our previous results were found in adult trees, suggesting that variability in the number of nodes produced per year is underestimated, because the degree of variation decreases with age. Here, we hypothesized that growth periodicity could be related to rainfall and we focus on two C. sciadophylla populations with contrasting precipitation seasonality. During 19 months and for 69 saplings, we measured growth at regular monthly intervals to test the intra-annual variability in the number of nodes produced per month and per year. We also characterized the intra-annual fluctuations in the number of present leaves in the main axis and internode lengths among months. We found that node elongation and number of present leaves in the main axis vary among months in the population subjected to a strong seasonal precipitation. In contrast, the population subjected to a non-seasonal precipitation showed smaller variation in node elongation and no variation in the number of leaves presented in the main axis among months. Regardless the population of origin, we also found that ~23 was the number of nodes produced per year and that the time required to produce a new node was ~15 days at any month of the year. The strong stability in the average number of nodes produced per month and per year among populations, suggests a genetically controlled trait. In spite of a strong genetic determination on the number of nodes produced per year, several environmental factors, including rainfall, could be the cause of the observed variation in elongation and number of present leaves in the main axis.INRAUM2