Wood, or xylem, is a globally important commodity that has been important to humans for building material, shelter, and fuel for millennia. In plants, wood makes up the water transport tissue that is crucial for moving water and chemicals throughout the plant body to maintain healthy functioning. Understanding how wood functions not only enables more efficient use of this important resource, but it is also important to the understanding of how plants are adapted to the environment, how ecosystems function, and how plants evolve. Wood has important functions besides transport of water such as structural support of the plant body and storage of water and nutrients. These functions are largely interdependent such that wood that is proficient at one function may necessarily be poor at another function giving rise to tradeoffs. Understanding these tradeoffs, their structural basis, and evolutionary consequences is a central objective for plant biologists. Although storage is an important wood function, research is lacking on how wood storage integrates with the water transport and mechanical support functions of wood. The proposed study will examine xylem functional tradeoffs with an emphasis on how storage interacts with transport and biomechanical traits among plants in California's biodiverse Mediterranean type climate region. To get a broad understanding of this topic, sampled species will include woody plants with evergreen and deciduous leaf habits, and plants that either sprout after fires or those that do not sprout. Analyses will include both stems and roots. This project will aid in the teaching of undergraduate and Master's students, and a post-doctoral scholar at a minority serving institution, California State University, Bakersfield. The educational impact will be heightened by presentation of the ongoing research at an on campus Environmental Study Area, which hosts about 6000 visitors annually ranging from school children to seniors. A summer program will also be initiated for high school/community college students and teachers to conduct plant research related to wood function.
