ArticleAnnals of botany2025
Floral freezing tolerance is tied to flowering time in North American woody plant species.
Article in Annals of botany, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Unraveling the role of interstocks in delaying flowering and mitigating spring frost risk in Iranian commercial almonds through morphophysiological, biochemical, and molecular approaches.BMC plant biology · 2026Article
- Thresholds for spring freeze: measuring risk to improve predictions in a warming world.The New phytologist · 2025Review
- Floral freezing tolerance is tied to flowering time in North American woody plant species.Annals of botany · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsAs winter and spring temperatures continue to increase, the timing of flowering and leaf-out is advancing in many seasonally cold regions. This advancement could put plants that flower early in the spring at risk of decreased reproduction in years when there are late freeze events. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about floral freezing tolerance in forest communities. In this study, we examined the impact of freezing temperatures on the flowers of woody plants in a region where there is rapid winter warming in North America.
methodsWe subjected the flowers of 25 woody species to a hard (-5 °C) and a light freeze (0 °C). We assessed tissue damage using electrolyte leakage. In a subset of species, we also examined the impact of a hard freeze on pollen tube growth. To determine if the vulnerability of flowers to freezing damage relates to flowering time and to examine the responsiveness of flowering time to spring temperature, we recorded the date of first flower for our study species for 3 years. KEY RESULTS AND
conclusionsAcross species, we found that floral freezing tolerance was strongly tied to flowering time, with the highest freezing tolerance occurring in plants that bloomed earlier in the year. We hypothesize that these early blooming species are unlikely to be impacted by a false spring. Instead, the most vulnerable species to a false spring should be those that bloom later in the season. The flowering time in these species is also more sensitive to temperature, putting them at a great risk of experiencing a false spring. Ultimately, floral damage in one year will not have a large impact on species fitness, but if false springs become more frequent, there could be long-term impacts on reproduction of vulnerable species.
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