Une méthode simple de collecte de bois et d'écorce pour des études anatomiques

Trees, and thus wood, are major components of the biosphere. Wood constitutes a huge source of information regarding several domains like systematics, ecology or adaptative evolution. Despite its significance, wood is not often sampled extensively; most probably due to logistical reasons (harvesting or carrying problems). This work aims to review the different techniques which already exist to collect wood, from the Pressler increment borer, to the recent Trephor®, draw up a specific methodology to sample wood, and finally describe a new method to sample wood. This cheap and easy method only requires the use of a punch, a clearing rod and a hammer, and allows taking samples containing the outermost stem tissues (bark, phloem, cambial zone) and a more or less substancial part of the most recently formed wood, on several trees, from softwood to hardwood, from temperate to tropical species. The sections prepared from the obtained samples are perfectly usable for anatomy. The samples can be collected as complements for herbarium samples (for systematic) as well as for particular dendroecological studies.