The use of leaf blade indices in studying the variability of felt microvilli in naturalization foci

The variability of plants in the centers of naturalization is formed mainly from the first established founders in a new location. Depending on the differences in the genotypes of the founders of the emerging foci of naturalization of nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa Thunb.), the degree of differentiation of the overall variability in plant groupings can also be expected. Many economically valuable varieties of P. tomentosa are hybrids with sand cherry (P. pumila L.) in 3-4 generations. Plants of P. tomentosa are ubiquitous in forests, sometimes forming vast tracts of undergrowth. For the first time, an attempt was made to identify interpopulation differences in mor-phometric characteristics of the leaf blade. Using the analysis of variance, statistically significant differences were found in the signs L, D, A, P, A/L, A/D. The use of the t-criterion Student's at α=0.05 revealed significant differ-ences in the control group of plants of seed origin from varieties and plants in the foci of naturalization on the basis of A/L. Also, the highest coefficient of determination (0.35) was obtained for the A/L index, showing that 35% of the variance is due to interpopulation differences. The A/L index was able to group the results of observations for 2023 and 2024 on the same plants and identify significant differences between the form I 3-17 and varieties ‘Damanka’ and ‘Alice’. When studying the effect of the landing site on the variability of traits, it was not possible to identify an effective variable grouping clones of the same genotype from different locations and reliably distin-guishing genotypes from each other.