Data from: Towards a worldwide wood economics spectrum

Wood performs several essential functions in plants, including
mechanically supporting aboveground tissue, storing water and other
resources, and transporting sap. Woody tissues are likely to face
physiological, structural and defensive trade-offs. How a plant optimizes
among these competing functions can have major ecological implications,
which have been under-appreciated by ecologists compared to the focus they
have given to leaf function. To draw together our current understanding of
wood function, we identify and collate data on the major wood functional
traits, including the largest wood density database to date (8412 taxa),
mechanical strength measures and anatomical features, as well as
clade-specific features such as secondary chemistry. We then show how wood
traits are related to one another, highlighting functional trade-offs, and
to ecological and demographic plant features (growth form, growth rate,
latitude, ecological setting). We suggest that, similar to the manifold
that tree species leaf traits cluster around the ‘leaf economics
spectrum’, a similar ‘wood economics spectrum’ may be defined. We then
discuss the biogeography, evolution and biogeochemistry of the spectrum,
and conclude by pointing out the major gaps in our current knowledge of
wood functional traits.