Data recorded for leaf size, and leaf vein and areole measurements taken from nine Magnoliaceae species

Across species, the density of major veins in leaves scales inversely with leaf area. Yet, minor vein density manifests no clear relationship with respect to leaf are, despite having the potential to provide important insights into the trade-off between investments in leaf mechanical support, hydraulics, and light interception. To examine this phenomenon, between 120−380 mature leaves from each of nine Magnoliaceae species were sampled from Nanjing Forestry University campus and Nanjing Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China in 2019 and 2020. The leaves were boiled, and the epidermal and mesophyll tissues were removed. The remaining leaf skeleton was stained to obtain a clear leaf venation network. The software LEAF GUI was used to obtain the data of leaf size, leaf vein and areole traits. The large sample size data render it possible to explore the scaling relationships between leaf size and each trait of leaf veins and areoles. This data set includes the informa..., Leaf sampling
Leaves of nine species of Magnoliaceae (Magnolia amoena, Magnolia denudate, Magnolia soulangeana, Magnolia tomentosa, Michelia cavaleriei var. platypetala, Michelia chapensis, Michelia compressa, Michelia figo, and Michelia maudiae) were collected from Nanjing Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Nanjing Forestry University Xinzhuang Campus, Nanjing, China. Fully expanded and fully developed leaves, at least three months old were sampled between July to September in 2019 and 2020. The sampling of leaves for any one species was completed well within one year, in order to avoid phenological changes in leaf architecture. However, the sampling of all the leaves from all of the species was not performed in the same year owing to the required heavy workload this would have necessitated. For each species, 300−500 leaves from three to five mature trees were randomly sampled from the middle canopy without distinguishing between sun leaves and shade leaves (because the ...,