Long-Distance Signal Transmission in Trees - Communication in Plants: Neuronal Aspects of Plant Life - page 339

Ψ

consider the leaf water potential (

l )toexplainthefullrangeofresponses
in stomatal conductance. Recent studies (Salleo et al. 2000) suggest that the
stomatal response to drought is the result of the integration of hydraulic and
chemical root-generated signals. For example, to link the dosage-response
characteristics of the guard cells to ABA with observed xylem imports over
a drought sequence, it is often necessary to assume increased sensitivity to
ABA at low Ψ

l , an inherent merging of chemical versus hydraulic signalling
concepts (Comstock 2002). Numerous reports detail a wide range of dif-
ferent stress treatments in various experiments which are associated with
remarkably constant values of Ψ l when comparing stressed and control

Ψ plants. This constancy of

l is often cited as evidence against a hydraulic
signal. Such a conclusion, however, implies that the diverse treatments are
(1) as a side effect, causing large alterations in hydraulic conductance, (2)
that ABA is having an entirely independent effect on stomatal conduc-
tance and (3) that these independent effects on hydraulic and stomatal
conductance just happen to be so consistently well balanced and produce
no measurable perturbation in

Ψ l . This is possible in some cases, but it

seems an improbable explanation of such general behaviour. More likely
hypotheses would be either that both chemical and hydraulic signals are
operative and are integrated at the level of stomatal regulation, or even that
hydraulic conductance itself is somehow being actively regulated. As has
been pointed out previously (Tardieu and Davies 1993) it is often precisely
in those species in which Ψ l shows the least variation that a component of

hydraulic signalling may be most clearly present. Nevertheless, statements
that observed homeostatic conservation of Ψ l during various treatments

rules out hydraulic signals are still common in the literature. In describing
the method by which leaf hydration controls g in woody plants, Saliendra
et al. (1995) noted that both hydroactive and hydropassive processes are
likely to be important and would involve both hormonal and hydraulic
mechanisms. Correia et al. (1995), Thomas and Eamus (1999) and Augé et
al. (2000) also noted the likely interaction of both hormonal and hydraulic
influences in modulating g .

23.5
Electrical Signals

The wounding of a leaf or a part of the shoot is known to cause variations
in the extracellular electrical potential measured with surface contact elec-
trodes (van Sambeek and Pickard 1976; Shiina and Tazawa 1986; Wildon et
al. 1989) or with platinum or silver wires inserted directly into the tissues
(Roblin 1985; Zawadzki et al. 1995). Wound- or stimulus-induced electri-
cal phenomena in plants consist of a so-called variation potential (VP) or