Allometries of cell and tissue anatomy and photosynthetic rate across leaves of C and C grasses.

Allometric relationships among the dimensions of leaves and their cells hold across diverse eudicotyledons, but have remained untested in the leaves of grasses. We hypothesised that geometric (proportional) allometries of cell sizes across tissues and of leaf dimensions would arise due to the coordination of cell development and that of cell functions such as water, nutrient and energy transport, and that cell sizes across tissues would be associated with light-saturated photosynthetic rate. We tested predictions across 27 globally distributed C and C grass species grown in a common garden.