An international team of researchers from Poland, France, the UK, the Netherlands and New Zealand studied the relationship between weather and synchronous reproduction of beech trees across Europe. The team of scientists was led by Professor Michał Bogdziewicz from the Faculty of Biology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. A publication on this topic appeared in the journal Nature Plants.
Continental synchronisation of seed years is a resultant of weather synchronisation. However, it requires that all plants respond to weather variability simultaneously. Research by Prof Bogdziewicz’s team has uncovered the existence of an astronomical clue that enables such precise synchronisation – this is the maximum relative day length at the summer solstice.
The scientists looked at the detailed changes in the level of beech trees’ response to temperature and found that trees across Europe suddenly start ‘reading’ the temperature on the twenty-first of June, precisely after the summer solstice.
