GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

20-09-2004, 05:54 AM

(daniel) wrote in
om:

I thought about giving the background of my question when opening
the thread but I decided not to do it, due to the fact that I
wanted more biological oriented answers.

Beside the fact that I was simply curious if there exist
reasonable estimates about the maximum amount of leaves/needles of
trees my focus was on realistic graphical representation of trees.
Most tress I have seen in computergraphics are among the poorest
objects. A good representation could aim to draw at least one
triangle per leave and let them swing in the wind.

I am pretty sure that nobody ever "counted" the leaves of large
trees, but there should be reasonable estimates for their amount.
e.g. collect all the leaves in autumn for a standalone tree and
weigh them. Maybe some inside bilogical knowhow as described in
one of the threads could help. Up to now I have seen some guesses.
Isn't there some scientific work
about this topic?
How is the amount of the oxygen/carbon dioxid turnover estimated?
Wouldn't it make sense to have some O_2 capacity estimate for
leaves of
different trees?

thanks for your posts, daniel

You would probably be surprised by the things done by scientists 2-
300 years ago. Rest assured that someone has counted leaves on trees
of various species.

Just don't ask me to tell you the names of the works that document
such, you would probably have to go to Europe and mug around in some
dusty stacks to find them.

Sean