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PLANT PHENOLOGY

The belowground growing season

Nature Climate Change (2021)Cite this article

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As temperatures rise, plants unfold their leaves earlier in spring, but whether plant roots respond similarly is seldom quantified. Now, a meta-analysis suggests that leaf and root phenology do not respond to warming in the same way, even within the same plant types.

One of the most prominent signs of climate warming in seasonal ecosystems is the change of plant phenology, that is, periodic events in a plant’s life cycle, such as leaves unfolding earlier in spring and changing when they colour in autumn. These trends have been recorded from individual trees to continental patterns1,2. However, such studies rarely take into account that a large part, often even the majority, of a plant is belowground3,4,5. In this issue of Nature Climate Change, Liu et al.6 focus on what is hidden in the soil, and report that root growth does not necessarily respond to warming in the same way as the more easily observed leaves.

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Fig. 1: As temperatures rise, above- and belowground phenology do not respond in the same way.

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  1. Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Gesche Blume-Werry

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  1. Gesche Blume-Werry
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Correspondence to Gesche Blume-Werry.

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Blume-Werry, G. The belowground growing season. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01243-y

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