December EcoQuest - Blooming Bioblitz

Have you noticed plants blooming now, at a time when they are normally dormant in preparation for winter? Out-of-season blooming has been noted along the Front Range this fall, with plants that normally bloom in the spring reblooming, or late blooming plants still going strong. It is well-documented that dry weather can lead to drought stress, and trigger plants to bloom at abnormal times of the year. And this fall has been particularly dry and mild for the Denver metro area – in fact, this is the longest stretch in the history of recording meteorological data that Denver has received no snow.

Phenology is the timing of plant life-cycle events, such as flowering or leafing out. Phenology is also a leading indicator of climate change impacts – shifts in flowering time are directly correlated to climatic changes resulting from global warming, with many spring events occurring earlier and fall events happening later than they did in the past. Phenology not only affects the plant itself, but any organism that depends on this plant for food. For example, insect emergence is often synchronized with host plants leafing out, or pollinators emerge when plants are blooming. Shifts in plant phenology can lead to a disruption in important ecosystem services, and potentially have cascading effects on a multitude of organisms.

Help Denver Botanic Gardens document any flowering plants you see in the month of December for a phenology bioblitz, either native or cultivated. Post your findings to iNaturalist so they will be automatically added to the Denver EcoFlora Project. Let’s see just how many blooming plants we can find, and document these occurrences for future phenological research.

Posted on 03 December, 2021 14:34 by jackerfield jackerfield

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