Tropical flowers are shifting bloom times in opposite directions by season
Xue Q, Vitasse Y, Peng D, Du Y
Phenology
If you track bloom dates in a tropical or subtropical garden, this explains why some plants seem to bloom later each year while others creep earlier, and it's not random: it tracks which season they flower in.
Scientists dug through 100 years of pressed plant specimens and old photographs from Hainan Island to see how 56 wild tropical plants have responded to a warming climate. They found a surprising split: plants that normally bloom in spring and summer are flowering later as temperatures rise, while plants that bloom in autumn and winter are flowering earlier. More rain also pushed spring and summer blooms later. This means tropical plants don't all respond to climate change the same way, and the season a plant blooms in matters more than what family it belongs to.
Key Findings
Spring-flowering species delayed blooming by 5.01 ± 0.32 days per °C of warming, and summer-flowering species delayed by 1.96 ± 0.47 days per °C
Autumn-winter-flowering species advanced (bloomed earlier) by 5.61 ± 0.64 days per °C, the opposite direction of spring/summer species
Increased precipitation delayed flowering in spring (+3.54 ± 0.21 days per 10mm) and summer (+4.21 ± 0.17 days per 10mm), with no significant phylogenetic signal detected across the 56 species
chevron_right Technical Summary
A century of herbarium specimens and old photos from a tropical island in China reveal that climate change is pushing flowering times in opposite directions depending on the season: warming delays spring and summer blooms but makes autumn-winter flowers appear earlier.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Climate-Driven Shifts in Flowering Phenology of Wild Tropical Plants Uncovered by Century-Long Herbarium and Photographic Records.
Research on phenological responses to climate change has primarily focused on temperate regions, while tropical species remain critically understudied due to a historical scarcity of long-term moni...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Was this useful?
Want to tell us more? (optional)
Thanks for the note!
Something went wrong — please try again.
Too many submissions. Try again in an hour.
Temperature regulation in plants: From molecular mechanisms to climate-resili...
The wheat in your bread and the vegetables in your garden depend on precise temperature cues to know when to flower and set seed — and scientists decoding ex...
Climate adaptation in plants refers to the physiological and evolutionary mechanisms through which plants adjust to changing environmental conditions, including temperature shifts, altered precipitation patterns, and seasonal variations. Understanding these processes is essential for plant science
arrow_forward Explore topic