Arnold Arboretum
Researchers at Arnold Arboretum Studying Maple Trees and ‘Cold Hardiness’
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This year’s dramatically fluctuating temperature cycles from seasonably cold days to atypically warm stretches and back again has affected the life cycles of many species, including plants. At the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, two scientists are examining how maple trees (Acer) are responding to climate stress and what that means for the future of the genus. Jake Grossman and Al Kovaleski, Putnam Research Fellows at the Arboretum, are modeling the evolution of the maples located in the Arboretum’s living collections, examining their 60 million-year journey from their origins in East Asia to current global distribution. By learning how the trees withstand low temperature stress in their tissues and respond to warm spells when they are dormant—called “cold hardiness”—they can help predict outcomes of climate change for maples, and other trees in Northern Hemisphere forests, and potentially even crops and agriculture. We asked the researchers what they are learning about how plants adapt and evolve to climate change and what it means for New England and beyond. Gazette: Does the rate of climate change impact a species’ ability to evolve and adapt to weather conditions?