Background and Aims The hydraulic conductance of the soil is expected to become limiting for plant transpiration in drying soils. Specifically, coarse textured soils are expected to limit transpiration at less negative soil water potential (Ψ soil ). Yet, there is still limited experimental evidence on Ψ soil and relative transpiration rate at which the decline in soil conductance impacts plant water status and the whole soil...

Increasing severity and frequency of drought is predicted for large portions of the terrestrial biosphere, with major impacts already documented in wet tropical forests. Using a 4‐year rainfall exclusion experiment in the Daintree Rainforest in northeast Australia, we examined canopy tree responses to reduced precipitation and soil water availability by quantifying seasonal changes in plant hydraulic and carbon traits for 11 t...

Ecology Letters (2012) 15 : 666–672 Abstract Grasses such as bamboos can produce upright stems more than 30 m tall, yet the processes that constrain plant height in this important group have never been investigated. Air embolisms form commonly in the water transport system of grasses and we hypothesised that root pressure‐dependent refilling these embolisms should limit the maximum height of grass species to the magnitude of t...

Ecology letters (2010) 13: 175–183 Abstract Angiosperm evolution transformed global ecology, and much of this impact derives from the unrivalled vegetative productivity of dominant angiosperm clades. However, the origins of high photosynthetic capacity in angiosperms remain unknown. In this study, we describe the steep trajectory of leaf vein density ( D v ) evolution in angiosperms, and predict that this leaf plumbing innovat...