US EPA

52792 

Journal Article 

Transpiration and leaf temperature 

Gates, DM 

1968 

Yes 

Annual Review of Plant Biology
ISSN: 1543-5008
EISSN: 1545-2123 

19 

211-238 

10.1146/annurev.pp.19.060168.001235 

No literature of plant science offers more confusion than the publications concerned with transpiration and plant temperature. Transpiration rate and leaf temperature are the result of the interaction of several simultaneous environmental factors interacting with a leaf to a degree determined by several plant properties. Hence the dependent variables, transpiration rate and leaf temperature, depend upon many independent variables of climate and plant acting in various combinations at any single moment. The investigator either has not recognized this inherent difficulty, or complexity, or if he did recognize it, did not know what to do about it. Therefore many experiments which were thought to be definitive were indefinite because one or more variables were ignored in the context of the variables observed. Very often good quantitative measurements were made of transpiration rate, leaf temperature, air temperature, wind, and relative humidity and then the relationships between dependent and independent variables were not made quantitative for lack of a good analytical framework. In other words, to put it simply and bluntly, the science of transpiration and leaf temperature was not understood. It is hoped that this presentation will be a step toward increased understanding of the interaction between transpiration, leaf temperatures, and environment.