Morphological features of juvenile Pinus sylvestris L. on the ash dumps in the Middle Urals

The article analyzes the morphological structure of juvenile Pinus sylvestris L. in 40–45-year-old forest phytocenosis, which are formed in the process of self-overgrowing on ash dumps and in the natural forest of the Middle Urals. According to the main morphological features (shoots and roots weight, shoots length, length of roots, density of absorbing roots on conducting ones, shoots roots mass ratio) juvenile Pinus sylvestris L. from recultivated and unrecultivated sections of different ash dumps do not differ significantly but they have shoots and roots 1.5–2.5 times larger, and weight 2–3 times larger than individuals from natural habitats. It is shown that slow growth of seedlings in natural forest is associated with the effects of the phytocoenotic press: with the high closeness of grass-shrub and shrub layers and competition from tree layer.