Abstract

The paper summarizes the results of for more than 100 years of research by Russian and foreign scientists on an unusual and widely known representative of woody flora, the Karelian (aka Curly) birch Betula pendula Roth var. carelica (Mercklin) Hämet-Ahti. Their analysis shows that the key outcome of the decades of Karelian birch studies is the identification and description of its major biological characteristics: population and species–specific, anatomical–morphological, cytological, physiological–biochemical and molecular–genetic characteristics. Taken in their entirety, these characteristics make the Karelian birch a unique biological object, one that is singled out primarily for its highly valuable wood pattern. Its high commercial demand and its prolonged, intensive, often uncontrolled exploitation, however, have caused a dramatical decline in Karelian birch resources in the second half of the 20th century, putting its very existence in many countries, including Russia, at risk. The features of its reproduction in nature and the advantages of clonal micropropagation for the preservation of the Karelian-birch gene pool and the reproduction of its most valuable genotypes are briefly discussed. We emphasize that, despite the significant interest in the Karelian birch and the vast amount of multifaceted information amassed over years of studies, many questions remain. The authors believe the following issues to be of major importance: (а) the question of its origin, (b) the causes and mechanisms of the formation of its wood-texture pattern, and (c) its taxonomic status. Proceeding from this, we provide a short description of the recent hypotheses that represent the current understanding of these questions, including the authors’ own stance, and a listing of other questions and tasks that could set the directions of further research on the Karelian birch.

中文翻译：

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卡累利阿人桦木：独特的生物对象

摘要

这篇论文总结了俄罗斯和外国科学家100多年来对一种不常见且广为人知的木本植物代表菌Karelian（又名Curly）桦木Betula pendula Roth var的研究结果。Carelica（默克林）哈梅特-阿赫蒂。他们的分析表明，数十年来的卡累利阿桦研究的关键成果是对其主要生物学特征的识别和描述：种群和物种特异性，解剖学，形态学，细胞学，生理生化和分子遗传学特征。从整体上看，这些特征使卡累利阿桦树成为一种独特的生物物体，主要由于其极有价值的木纹而被选出来。然而，其高昂的商业需求及其长期，密集，经常不受控制的开采，已导致20世纪下半叶卡累利阿人的桦树资源急剧减少，这使其在许多国家（包括俄罗斯）的生存受到威胁。简要讨论了其自然繁殖的特征以及克隆微繁用于保存卡累利阿桦基因库及其最有价值的基因型繁殖的优势。我们强调，尽管经过多年的研究，人们对卡累利阿桦树产生了浓厚的兴趣，并积累了大量的多方面信息，但仍然存在许多问题。作者认为以下问题非常重要：（a）其起源问题，（b）其木材纹理图案形成的原因和机制，以及（c）其分类地位。因此，我们简要介绍了代表当前对这些问题的理解的最新假设，包括作者的立场，