Using the meticulous¹（一丝不苟的） phenological records of two iconic American naturalists², Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold, scientists have demonstrated that native plants in the eastern United States are flowering as much as a month earlier in response to a warming climate. The new study is important because it gives scientists a peek³ inside the black box of ecological⁴ change. The work may also help predict effects on important agricultural crops, which depend on flowering to produce fruit.

 

The study was published online Jan. 16 in PLoS One by a team of researchers from Boston and Harvard Universities and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

Compared to the timing⁵ of spring flowering in Thoreau's day, native plants such as serviceberry and nodding trillium are blooming 11 days earlier, on average, in the area around Concord⁶, Mass., where Thoreau famously lived and worked. Nearly a thousand miles away in Wisconsin, where Leopold gathered his records of blooming plants like wild geranium（天竺葵） and marsh⁷ marigold（驴蹄草）, the change is even more striking. In 2012, the warmest spring on record for Wisconsin, plants bloomed on average nearly a month earlier than they did just 67 years earlier when Leopold made his last entry.

 

"These historical records provide a snapshot in time and a baseline of sorts against which we can compare more recent records from the period in which climate change has accelerated," explains Stan Temple, a co-author of the study and an emeritus⁸ UW-Madison professor of wildlife ecology. Temple is also a senior fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wis., a stone's throw from the iconic shack⁹ where Leopold made many of his observations.

 

Although the new study is not the first to document the relationship between temperature and flowering dates and the trend toward climate-driven early blooming, it is the first to suggest that the trend in flowering plants may continue beyond what has been observed in controlled studies. The work thus has important implications for predicting plant responses to changing climate, essential for plants such as fruit trees, which are highly susceptible¹⁰ to the vagaries¹¹ of climate and weather.

 

"We used relationships revealed in historical records to predict how 47 species of native plants would respond to unprecedented¹² spring temperatures, but that has only been possible because naturalists, past and present, kept good records of what they observed in nature," Temple avers¹³.

 

Importantly, the results give scientists a peek into the subtleties¹⁴ of ecological change in response to climate change. Flowering of native plants, a harbinger of spring in the world's temperate¹⁵ regions, signals the start of the growing season. Changes in the timing of flowering have broad implications for the animals and insects that depend on the plants.

 

"Earlier blooming exposes plants to a greater risk of experiencing cold snaps that can damage blossoms and prevent fruiting," says Temple. "The Door County (Wisconsin) cherry crop was ruined in 2012 because the trees bloomed very early in response to record-breaking warmth only to be hit by subsequent frost."

 

"The Door County cherry crop was ruined in 2012 because the trees bloomed very early in response to record-breaking warmth only to be hit by subsequent frost."

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