05/3/13

Phenology on the bluffs

Just a quick note of introduction and a promise of blog posts to come. I am a postdoc in the Biodiversity Centre studying global and local patterns of how plant communities alter their phenology — specifically the timing of leafing and flowering — with climate (a photo from my current field site is above, it’s a Gary Oak ecosystem along the Saturna Bluffs; taken on 25 April this year). I joined the Aitken lab recently to think more about how species balance trade-offs in phenology between plasticity and local adaptation.

I am leaving on a long week trip next week but will return with updates this summer!

04/23/13

Awakening buddies

Springtime in Vancouver is well established. The sun makes more frequent outbreaks, the fantastic cherryblossom period that made our streets so pink is drawing to an end, shy tender green leaves have appeared on the tip of deciduous bare trees…

What about conifers? Static, boring, would you say?

Look closer when you walk through the forest, conifers are quitting dormancy as well. Buds that protected vegetative meristems are swelling, swelling, and…eventually breaking, pressured by the appearing needle primordia underneath the protective scales…

As I am spending quite much time in a Sitka spruce garden experiment, It appears to me that each bud has a kind of personality on its own. Let me introduce some of them:

Dopey