A new study published in Nature Plants has found that the summer solstice is a “starting gun” to synchronise beech tree reproduction across vast distances in Europe.
A new study published in Nature Plants has found that the summer solstice is a “starting gun” to synchronise beech tree reproduction across vast distances in Europe.
An international research team from the University of Liverpool, the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland and the University of Canterbury, Christchurch in New Zealand joined forces to look at the associations between weather patterns and seed production in perennial plants like the European beech (Fagus sylvatica), and to explore how tree reproduction is consistently synchronized across vast distances.
Previous work by the team had shown that the key to achieving this synchrony is a coordinated response to an external trigger, such as weather, but how the European beech – which grows across the European continent with greatly varying climates – achieved this was a mystery.
Read more at University of Liverpool
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