WHY CONIFERS ARE THE CHIEF PLANT CASUALTIES OF ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
If conifers are largely indifferent to substrate fertility and nutrient cycling, it is, possibly, because they are able to satisfy many of their inorganic requirements from compounds in the air. As a group they are adapted in various ways to collect cloud and fog water impacting on their foliage and to induce a precipitation of dew on their crowns. It is also possible that they are adapted to exploit Earth's static electric field so that water droplets containing dissolved molecules and ions are attracted to positive charges on their wax-coated needles and scales (electrical attraction prevailing against the hydrophobic nature of waxes) so that droplets enlarge and coalesce whilst adhering to the foliage. Absorbed by the foliage or precipitating as throughfall on the litter where it is eventually absorbed by roots and mycorrhizae, the water collected by conifers is more acid than rain in their locality, so that, with the addition of air pollution, trees making use of this resource are particularly disadvantaged.