Trees increase their <scp>P</scp>:<scp>N</scp> ratio with size

Trees may have thus developed long-term adaptive mechanisms to store P in biomass, mainly in wood, thereby slowing the loss of P from the ecosystems, reducing its availability for competitors, and implying an increase in the P:N ratio in forest biomass with aging. This trend to accumulate more P than N with size is more accentuated in slow-growing, large, long-living species of late successional stages. This way they partly counterbalance the gradual decrease of P in the soil.