A dataset on leaf sizes of 335 woody species across China

Leaf samples were collected from 64 sites, spanning the land-sea gradient from Tianshan piedmonts to the Zhoushan Archipelago and the latitudinal gradient from Hainan Island to the Lesser Khingan Mountains. For each species, we sampled no fewer than 20 leaves from at least three individual plants at a particular site, with some species contributing up to more than 1000 leaves from 30 individual plants to the dataset.

The 335 species were widely distributed across the phylogenetic breadth of dicotyledon, including 29 orders, 76 families and 184 genera. Among these, there were relatively ancient taxa such as Magnoliales and Ranunculaes, as well as recently diverged taxa such as Umbeliiflorae. These 335 species encompassed substantial diversity of plant functional groups, including 208 arbors and 127 shrubs, 222 evergreen and 113 deciduous species, 309 single- and 26 compound-leafed species.