By Richard B. Primack
“One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.” Henry David Thoreau in Walden.
In a recent article in the journal Oecologia, we report that local soil temperature has the potential to affect the timing of spring flowering, which is a key indicator of the biological effects of climate change.
Over four years (from 2019 to 2022), we investigated the effects of local soil temperature on spring flowering times for 35 local populations of Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense) growing within a few hundred yards of each other in the Webster Woods in Newton, Massachusetts (USA).
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| Photo 1: Plants reaching a high density on the forest floor in the Webster Woods. |
Some populations were on sunny south facing slopes and others were growing in deep shape on north facing slopes under evergreen hemlock trees. Plants in each population were individually marked.
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| Photo 2: Flowering plants were individually marked to follow flowering. |
At these 35 field sites, flowering dates varied by 5–7 days among sites. That is, the plants at some sites consistently flowered about one week before the plants at other sites.
Soil temperatures varied by about 9 °F across sites before and during the flowering season. This temperature difference between sites is about the same as the average temperature difference in May between Boston, Massachusetts and Charleston, South Carolina.
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| Photo 3: Soil thermometers were used to measure temperature. |
Among the populations, plants flowered earliest at sites with the warmest local climates—around one-half day earlier for each 1 °F warmer temperature.
This study demonstrates that the effects of local temperature on the timing of flowering can be investigated over relatively short periods of time, and that this approach can be combined with climate change studies at larger scales.
Here is a link to the article: LINK
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