Hi friends!! Luckily for us, phenology is sooo back in Vermont. Today, April 28th, I walked around the University of Vermont campus and took a close look at a few different tree species: red oak, sugar maple, white oak, red maple, and norway maple. These trees were spread around central campus and while each species was experiencing mildy different growing patterns, the overall presence of spring was very prominent. Some trees had breaking buds, most had some amount of pollen, and one species had flowers. I noticed that the trees with breaking buds, the red maple, was particularly different compared to the other trees. The buds were angled toward the sun, their energy source.
Next, I explored the National Phenology Network, the npn, website and looked at a news publication about the impact of climate change on plant and animal species. A team of researchers found that plant species are performing spring/summer events like flowering and leafing out much earlier than they did 40 years ago, and they are performing these events at a much faster rate than they used to. They also found that pollinator species are similarly flowering earlier than normal, but the pollinators that rely on them are not changing their patterns. This means that the period where pollinators are actively pollinating the plants is getting shorter. If nothing changes, this pattern will only get worse and it could significantly reduce pollinator visits in the early parts of the growing season.
Well friends, this is all for today. I hope you learned something and I encourage you to go look at some trees!!