Following a catastrophic wildfire, iconic coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) trees rebuilt their canopies by leveraging massive, stored carbon reserves, some of which were photosynthesized from the atmosphere 50–100 years ago. New leaves grew from buried buds, which had been dormant for 500–1,000 plus years in the oldest trees.
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References
Hoch, G., Richter, A. & Körner, C. H. Non-structural carbon compounds in temperate forest trees. Plant Cell Environ. 26, 1067–1081 (2003). A foundational paper characterizing the size of reserve pools in trees.
Carbone, M. S. et al. Age, allocation and availability of nonstructural carbon in mature red maple trees. New Phytol. 200, 1145–1155 (2013). An article that pioneered the sprout shading and collection approach used in this study.
Richardson, A. D. et al. Distribution and mixing of old and new nonstructural carbon in two temperate trees. New Phytol. 206, 590–597 (2015). This article introduced the ‘young’ and ‘old’ reserve pool framework and applied it to sapwood carbon reserves.
Peltier, D. M. P. et al. An incubation method to determine the age of available nonstructural carbon in woody plant tissues. Tree Physiol. https://doi.org/10.1093/treephys/tpad015 (2023). A paper describing the incubation method used to directly observe the reserve ages of sapwood.
Peltier, D. M. P. et al. Carbon starvation following a decade of experimental drought consumes old reserves in Pinus edulis. New Phytol. 240, 92–104 (2023). A new example of the relevance of old reserves towards another type of disturbance: long term drought.
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This is a summary of: Peltier, D. M. P. et al. Old reserves and ancient buds fuel regrowth of coast redwood after catastrophic fire. Nat. Plants https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-023-01581-z (2023).
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After fire, coast redwoods use decades-old carbon reserves to recover. Nat. Plants 9, 1956–1957 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-023-01585-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-023-01585-9
