Provenance Differences of Seedling Shoot Elongation Parameters in Schima superba

The periodicity of seedling shoot elongation in Schima superba was observed to illustrate provenance differences of growth parameters such as maximum growth rate (MGR) , linear growth rate (LGR) , total linear growth (TLG) and linear growth day (LGD) by using logistic curve function. The result showed that the seedling shoot elongation in Schima superba was preferably fitted by logistic curve, whose determinant coefficients were more than 0.92. There are significant differences among provenances and provenances zones for three biological parameters of logistic equation (a,b,c) and four seedling shoot elongation parameters (MGR, LGR, TLG, LGD). MGR, LGR and TLG were found to be negatively related to the latitude of provenance and appear a classical latitude cline variation pattern. The variation for three parameters above was mainly derived from provenances (42.84%-43.41%) and provenance zones (11.07%-13. 15%). LGD seemed to be not related to the longitude and altitude of provenance. The differences among both provenances and provenance zones were small for LGD. Correlation analysis demonstrated that the increase of TLG was attributed to the acceleration of MGR and LGR, but the prolongation of LGD.