Abstract
IN investigations of plant development it is helpful to be able to represent diagrammatically the changes which occur in the distribution of dry weight, total nitrogen or some other variable as the plant grows. It is usually desirable to distinguish at least four components of the plants of different physiological function, namely, leaf laminae, stems plus petioles, flowers plus fruits and roots, though data for the last-mentioned are often lacking. The values of the variable for each of these components should be plotted against a suitable independent variate which may be, for example, age, node number, leaf area or total dry weight. If the variable for the four components is plotted as four ordinary two-dimensional graphs, whether independently from the same base line or superimposed to build up the total, it is not easy to see whether the ratios of the values for the different components are constant or changing with growth of the plant. This can be seen by plotting logarithms of the values of the variable, but then their absolute magnitudes are obscured.
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HEATH, O. Diagrams of Changes in the Distribution of Plant Dry Weight or Other Variables. Nature 205, 921 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/205921a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/205921a0
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