The most serious quality issue of natural resources for human consumption or medicinal purposes is the contamination with pollutants harmful to consumers. Common blackberry (Rubus fruticosus L.) is a sought-after nutraceutical and an important component in herbal medicine in many places around the globe. The present study aims to analyze the level of heavy metal bioaccumulation in blackberry organs, as well as its spatial distribution in two consecutive years immediately after the interruption of the extended activity of the industrial source of pollution. The research was conducted in one of the most polluted areas in Romania and Eastern Europe, within a 26 km radius of the source of pollution. The Pb, Cd, Cu, and Zn concentrations in the leaves, flowers, and unwashed blackberry fruits were analyzed spectrophotometrically through flame atomic absorption spectroscopy (FAAS). The results show that blackberry is an important bioaccumulator of these heavy metals—71% of the Pb concentration values and 100% of the Cd concentration values exceeded the World Health Organization thresholds by up to 29 and 15 times, respectively. Also, the leaves are the largest reservoirs of Pb and Zn (the median values: 51.4 mg/kg dry weight and 105.2 mg/kg d.w., respectively), and the flowers contained the largest quantities of Cd and Cu (2.54 mg/kg d.w. and 11.3 mg/kg d.w., respectively). The Pb concentrations decreased by a power function in relation to the distance from the source of pollution. The implications of these results on the safety of the use of blackberry are discussed. The urgent necessity for food education of the local population which consumes contaminated nutraceutical products is emphasized.

Measuring the acoustic properties of wood is not feasible for most luthiers, so identifying simple, valid criteria for diagnosis remains an exciting challenge when selecting materials for manufacturing musical instruments. This article aims to verify whether the bark qualities as a marker of resonance wood are indeed useful. The morphometric and colour traits (in CIELab space) of the bark scales were compared with the structural (width and regularity of the growth rings and of the latewood) and acoustic features (transverse sound velocity, radiation ratio, impedance, and wood basic density) of the wood from 145 standing and 10 felled spruce trees, which are considered a resource of the resonance wood in the Romanian Carpathians. It has been emphasized that the spruce trees with acoustic and structural features that match the requirements for the manufacture of violins have a bark phenotype distinguishable by colour (higher redness, lower yellowness and brightness)—as well as by scale shape (higher slenderness and width). The south-facing side of the trunk and the external side of the scale are best for identifying resonance trees by their bark. Additionally, the mature bark phenotypes denote topoclinal variations and do not depend on tree age. Moreover, the differences among bark phenotypes are noticeable to the naked eye.

The median diameter of a longitudinal section of the stem may be used to determine the stem volume. However, to calculate stem volume, many measurements of diameter at different heights along the stem are required. Therefore, this approach is not generally applied because time-consuming and expensive. Here, we propose a novel, more rapid method to obtain median diameter using the area of the stem profile. A total of 218 height/diameter classes from more than 5000 spruce trees (Picea abies Karst.) were used to compute the median diameter using the classical method. In parallel, a regression model to assess the median diameter was developed. The strongest predictor of the median diameter for the stem profile was the diameter at breast height (R2 = 0.9985). Statistical analysis revealed that the height of the median diameter on the stem profile was 0.3 × H (tree height). The model was verified on standing and felled trees, revealing that differences between classical computations and the proposed model were less than 2% in most cases (86.24% of trees). The median diameter of the stem profile provides valuable information on stand architecture that could help in advancing our understanding on the mechanical stability of Norway spruce trees (i.e., delineating breakage point), growth model predictions, and competition among trees.