Study on Variation Characteristics of Camellia meiocarpa Leaf Phenotype Traits

The leaf phenotype variation of Camellia meiocarpa was analyzed by selecting 18 geographic populations within the broad distribution area of the species. The results showed that there was widely genetic variation either inside or among the geographic populations and the stability of leaf phenotype was pretty lower. There were extremely significant correlations among the indexes of leaf area, leaf perimeter, the length and width of Camellia meiocarpa leaves. There were significant correlations among the leaf thickness, leaf perimeter, leaf width and petiole length, and there were no significant correlations among other leaf trait indexes. The study showed that the major ecological factors which influenced leaf phenotype variation of Camellia meiocarpa were frostfree period, rainfall in July and August, the maximum temperature, and the yearly solar radiation hours. Among which, the yearly solar radiation time factor influenced on both the fruiting and leaf phenotype traits. The main leaf traits which were related to ecological factors were leaf area, leaf perimeter, the length, width and shape factor of the leaves. The Binary Tendency Surface Analysis showed that only leaf shape factor was significantly correlated with geographical variation. The clustering analysis on the leaf phenotype traits of Camellia meiocarpa showed that the 18 geographic populations could be obviously divided into 3 groups at 4.01 of UPGMA euclidean distance, which generally did not show obvious geographic regional feature among the populations.