Leaf Epidermal Morphology of Ten Wild Tree Peonies in China and Its Taxonomic Significance
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I consider the work to be of interest, but more clarity and precision should be provided, especially in the section on materials and methods. It is also convenient that the authors adequately assess the taxonomic value of their results, considering the differences observed, which the authors attribute to the adaptability of the species to the environment in which they have developed.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewers:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Leaf epidermal morphology of ten wild tree peonies in China and its taxonomic significance” (manuscript ID: 1689065). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance for our research. We haves studied your comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. In addition, we have carefully revised the manuscript text based on the format requirements of horticulturaea. The changes we have made are marked in red in the revised manuscript. We would be very grateful if the manuscript could be published in horticulturaea. The main corrections were in the revised manuscript, and the attached PDF file is the point-by-point responses to the reviewer.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Wenqing Jia
Corresponding author:
Name: Songlin He
E-mail: [email protected]
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The main aim of the paper is to know more about the leaf morphological variation of different species of Peonia. The information included is clear, the research is contributing to understand more about variation in dermic components of the leaves. Data on trichomes and stomata are of interest. The results may help in the characterization of Peonia species and help in breeding research.The methodology is quite clear as well as the figures. I made some observations related mainly to grammar (verbs and adjectives) and wording, please find a list at the end of the manuscript.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewers:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Leaf epidermal morphology of ten wild tree peonies in China and its taxonomic significance” (manuscript ID: 1689065). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance for our research. We haves studied your comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. In addition, we have carefully revised the manuscript text based on the format requirements of horticulturaea. The changes we have made are marked in red in the revised manuscript. We would be very grateful if the manuscript could be published in horticulturaea. The main corrections were in the revised manuscript, and the attached PDF file is the point-by-point responses to the reviewer.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Wenqing Jia
Corresponding author:
Name: Songlin He
E-mail: [email protected]
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The reviewed paper is dedicated to study of variation in selected micromorphological epidermal features of Paeonia species. Such goal is not unique, there are many papers with a similar scope (some of them cited by authors). It is therefore of even greated surprise that this work is so rich with flaws.
First, this text needs a double review prior to submission, firstly to correct its English and style (some of sentences are almost unreadable) and, secondly, to bring the whole work in line with conventional botanical terminology. Without a deep elaboration, this paper cannot be considered for publication neither in Horticulturae nor in any other journal. The review of this paper's scientific content is almost impossible because of its style flaws.
The Materials and Methods section needs to be seriously elaborated. When reading a paper, it is completely unclear how many individual plants were examined for each parameter. It is a very serious problem, as at the moment it is impossible to define whether the observed differences are between species - or specimens, or even between leaves of the same plant.
Authors have measured several quantitative parameters but provided no statistical treatment, i.e. it is unclear whether differences between species are statistically reliable and hence applicable for identification of species (say, in a form of key).
To conclude that epidermal features are of significance for classification, it is recommended to analyze all quantitative data in a single procedure, such as principal component analysis. After doing this, one can judge about taxonomical value of selected features in a more substantiated way.
More comments and suggestions are available in a manuscript file itself (see attached).
At the moment, this manuscript cannot be accepted for publication in Horticulturae.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewers:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Leaf epidermal morphology of ten wild tree peonies in China and its taxonomic significance” (manuscript ID: 1689065). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance for our research. We haves studied your comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. The revised content mainly includes: (1) We corrected the manuscript’s English and style; (2) We drastically revised the materials and Methods section and added maps; (3) We performed analysis of variance and multiple comparisons on data such as epidermal cell length, cell width, stomata size, stomatal density and so on. The changes we have made are marked in red in the revised manuscript. We would be very grateful if the manuscript could be published in horticulturaea. The main corrections were in the revised manuscript, and the attached PDF file is the point-by-point responses to the reviewer.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Wenqing Jia
Corresponding author:
Name: Songlin He
E-mail: [email protected]
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The research presented in the article "Leaf epidermal morphology of ten wild tree peonies in china and its significance" is fundamental
Pay attention to the references because they are not correctly cited, e.g., 25, 42,43
Statistics should be included, e.g. lines 185-193 for leaf density. Statistics are also needed for other research, e.g., stomata size.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Leaf epidermal morphology of ten wild tree peonies in China and its taxonomic significance” (manuscript ID: 1689065). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance for our research. We haves studied your comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. In addition, we have carefully revised the manuscript text based on the format requirements of horticulturaea. The changes we have made are marked in red in the revised manuscript. We would be very grateful if the manuscript could be published in horticulturaea. The main corrections were in the revised manuscript, and the following part is the point-by-point responses to the reviewer:
Reviewer’s comments:
Pay attention to the references because they are not correctly cited, e.g., 25, 42,43
Response: Thanks for your letter, and we have checked the references throughout and also revised “cited, e.g., 25, 42,43” and other errors according to MDPI LaTeX templates in the revised manuscript.
Statistics should be included, e.g. lines 185-193 for leaf density. Statistics are also needed for other research, e.g., stomata size.
Response: Thanks for your notifications, which is highly appreciated. We performed analysis of variance and multiple comparisons on data such as stomatal size, stomatal density and so on, and the revised content is detailed in the revised manuscript. We appreciated for editors’ and reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the revised manuscript will meet with approval.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Wenqing Jia
Corresponding author:
Name: Songlin He
E-mail: [email protected]
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
When reviewing this manuscript for the first time, I recommended to reject it. However, in accordance with a decision of the Editorial Office, the authors were given a possibility to submit their work after a major review.
In my opinion, this paper became clearer in some points. Authors have corrected two major concerns of their primary manuscript, viz. added more details to the description of materials and methods and provided the results of statistical analysis, at least in some points.
However, this work still needs a significant elaboration. Here are some points, which I find most important.
1. Language/style correction still needs improvement, the best is to ask a native speaker to review this paper prior to its resubmission.
2. Although authors added indicators of significance of quantitative differences between compared species (e.g., Table 2), there is no information what statistical methods were used for this purpose. It is strongly needed to add data on used software and (even more important) statistical procedures/tests to the Materials and Methods section.
3. In the same section (probably in Table 1), it is needed to provide numbers of herbarium voucher specimens, which are mentioned in lines 71-72.
4. As I have stated before, Fig. 4 has too small scaling, so it cannot illustrate cuticle ornamentation. To reflect cuticular features, SEM images need to be even of higher magnitude than Fig. 6, i.e. a whole photo should depict a single cell or its part.
5. Again, I stongly recommend to add multivariate analysis (such as principal component analysis) for all quantitative features in all sampled species simultaneously. Without this, it is difficult to judge about possibility to distinguish between species with use of micromorphological features.
If authors consider these suggestions, this paper can be recommended for publication in Horticulturae.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers:
Thank you for your comments, those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance for our research. According to your comments, we tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. And here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper.
We appreciate for reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestion. The following part is the point-by-point responses to the reviewer:
Reviewer’s comments:
1.Language/style correction still needs improvement, the best is to ask a native speaker to review this paper prior to its resubmission.
Response: Thanks for your suggestions, we have made correction and asked an English friend to revise the style and sentences of the article. Thank you for your warm-hearted work. I hope the revised manuscript meet with approval.
2.Although authors added indicators of significance of quantitative differences between compared species (e.g., Table 2), there is no information what statistical methods were used for this purpose. It is strongly needed to add data on used software and (even more important) statistical procedures/tests to the Materials and Methods section.
Response: Thanks for your comment, we are very sorry for our negligence of statistical analysis method, we have added information about statistics and graphics software in the material methods section, thank you.
3.In the same section (probably in Table 1), it is needed to provide numbers of herbarium voucher specimens, which are mentioned in lines 71-72.
Response: Thanks for your comments, which is highly appreciated. We have supplemented the number of specimens in the section of materials and methods. thank you.
4.As I have stated before, Fig. 4 has too small scaling, so it cannot illustrate cuticle ornamentation. To reflect cuticular features, SEM images need to be even of higher magnitude than Fig. 6, i.e. a whole photo should depict a single cell or its part.
Response: Thanks for your suggestions, we replaced the SEM photo of FIG. 4, so that readers could see the ornamentation on leaf epidermis more clearly, and we also modified the relevant analysis content of the results. Please refer to the revised paper for the modification, thank you.
5.Again, I stongly recommend to add multivariate analysis (such as principal component analysis) for all quantitative features in all sampled species simultaneously. Without this, it is difficult to judge about possibility to distinguish between species with use of micromorphological features.
Response: According to Reviewer’s suggestions, we added the table and plot about principal component analysis of leaf epidermal feature data, and added the content of principal component analysis to the results. Please refer to the revised paper for the modification, thank you.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Wenqing Jia
Corresponding author:
Name: Songlin He
E-mail: [email protected]
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
The article "Leaf epidermal morphology of ten wild tree peonies in China and its taxonomic significance" has been significantly improved after review and is suitable for publication.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers:
Thanks very much for your kind work and consideration on publication of our paper. On behalf of my co-authors, we would like to express our great appreciation to reviewers.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Wenqing Jia
Corresponding author:
Name: Songlin He
E-mail: [email protected]
Round 3
Reviewer 3 Report
During the second round of revision, this paper has been improved significantly. I still have some concerns about Fig. 4: in my opinion, it is not illustrious with respect to cuticle micromorphology.
The results of the PCA should be discussed in more details, especially to emphasize if the revealed clustering is somehow related to the existing ideas on classification within the sect. Moutan.
It is worth classifying stomata according to conventionally recognized types (e.g., see here: Barclay,R.;McElwain,J.;Dilcher,D.;Sageman,B. The Cuticle Database: Developing an interactive tool for taxonomic and
paleoenvironmental study of the fossil cuticle record. Cour. Forsch. Inst. Senckenberg 2007, 258, 39–55).
More comments and corrections can be found in the manuscript file (see attached).
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewers:
Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. I really appreciate all your comments and suggestions!. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance for our research. We haves studied your comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. The changes we have made are marked in red in the revised manuscript. and the attached PDF file is the point-by-point responses to the reviewer.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Wenqing Jia
Corresponding author:
Name: Songlin He
E-mail: [email protected]
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
