Abstract
The resistance to the diffusion of heat and water vapor external to a leaf, can be derived from measurement of the rate of change of the leaf temperature, after a sudden alteration of the intensity of irradiation. The theory of the method has been developed to accommodate the case of a leaf that is freely transpiring, exchanging longwave radiation with the environment and with different internal resistances on the 2 sides of the leaf. It has been successfully applied to measurements on wet blotting paper in the laboratory.