Gladiolus, an important cut flower, is a herbaceous plant that has sword-shaped leaves. The objectives of this study are to determinate an empirical model to estimate the area of gladiolus leaves from its linear dimensions and to apply this model to estimate the vertical profile of leaf area in different position on the plant. A field experiment was conducted in Santa Maria, RS, Brazil, with four gladiolus cultivars (Peter Pears, Rose Friendship, Jester and Amsterdam). A total of fifty leaves from each cultivar were collected and their width (C) and length (L) measured. Each leaves have then their area (AF) measured digitally. The relationship between area and dimensions of each leaf was fitted to a power model and the performance of the equations was evaluated by several statistics. Results indicates that the model AF = a. (C. L) is the best model to estimate leaf area in gladiolus, with a=0.664 for the four cultivars. Smaller leaves are ate the bottom and at the upper position and larger leaves are ate intermediate position on the plant.
Gladiolus grandiflorus; Sword lily; floriculture; photosynthetic area
