2011, 24(6): 774-778.
The fruits and seeds from four Elaeagnus mollis natural populations were collected in Pinglu, Xipo, Yaxia, and Ganquan as materials. The nested design was used to analyze the variation law and pattern of six phenotypic traits of E. mollis fruits and seeds from four natural distributed provenances. It showed that extremely significant differences were found among provenances in fruits length, seeds length, fruits length/fruits width and seeds length/seeds width. Difference in fruits width and seeds width were not remarkable among populations. The phenotypic differentiation coefficient of populations were 8.51% (fruits length), 0% (fruits width), 24.46% (seeds length), 1.61% (seeds width), 16.67% (fruits length/fruits width), and 29.41% (seeds length/seeds width), less than that among families in each trait. The traits of variation mainly come from the individuals.