News Plants

Trees ‘remember’ times of water abundance and scarcity

New research helps explain why drought kills some trees whereas others survive

An aerial view of a forest with a stark contrast between dead trees and patches of green, healthy foliage under a partly cloudy sky.

Norway spruce trees are highly sensitive to drought, as was demonstrated by large-scale die-offs during a 2018 drought in Germany.

Olaf Kolle and Henrik Hartmann

By Katarina Zimmer

How trees fare under drought depends heavily on their past experiences.

In some cases, adversity breeds resilience: Spruce trees that experience long-term droughts are more resistant to future droughts, owing to an impressive ability to adjust their canopies to save water, researchers in Germany report May 16 in Plant Biology.