  This paper applied the functional structural model GreenLab to adult Chinese
pine trees (pinus tabulaeformis Carr.). Basic hypotheses of the model were
validated such as constant allometry rules, relative sink relationships and
topology simplification. To overcome the limitations raised by the complexity
of tree structure for collecting experimental data, a simplified pattern of
tree description was introduced and compared with the complete pattern for the
computational time and the parameter accuracy. The results showed that this
simplified pattern was well adapted to fit adult trees with GreenLab.
