The influence of urban and suburban environmental conditions on the morphological characteristics of european beech leaves in the Belgrade area

Abstract

The research of morphological characteristics of leaves in urban and suburban conditions of the city of Belgrade has been carried out in this paper, in order to determine whether there is significant difference of these parameters on trees in urban and suburban zone of the city, i.e. the influence of urban and suburban environmental conditions on morphological characteristics of beech leaves in the territory of Belgrade. The research was performed on two sites in the territory of the city of Belgrade: Natural monument "Faculty of Forestry Arboretum" (urban zone) and "Area of Outstanding Natural Landscape Avala" (suburban zone). All the average values of the morphological parameters of leaves sampled in Arboretum are larger and show significant difference compared to morphological parameters of leaves sampled on Avala. This can be explained, besides the origin of the seeds, by the fact that the trees growing in Arboretum are protected from the negative anthropogenic influence and agrotechnical measures are regularly applied, in contrast to the beech trees in the natural stand of submontane beech forest on Avala, which does not have such protection.