First record of off-season flowering in Populus deltoides from India: paradigm of climate change indicator
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SHORT COMMUNICATION
First record of off-season flowering in Populus deltoides from India: paradigm of climate change indicator Garima Thapliyal 1 & Ramu S. Vemanna 2 & Prashant Mohan Pawar 2 & Santan Barthwal 1 & Rajendra K. Meena 1 & Shailesh Pandey 3 & Maneesh S. Bhandari 1 Received: 5 February 2020 / Accepted: 4 April 2020 # ISB 2020
Abstract Populus deltoides is a fast-growing woody species possessing plethora of industrial applications. This species evolutionarily developed unisexual male and female catkin inflorescence on separate trees. Flowering usually occurs during early spring before the development of foliage, where buds appear near axils or at the extending shoots. In 2019, surveys were undertaken to study the flowering pattern of P. deltoides in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in northern India. Interestingly, an anomalous flowering behaviour (appearance of off-season male catkins during autumn, i.e. October) was observed in a plantation trial at Kapurthala, Punjab. The male catkins were 2.7–3.1 ± 0.07 cm long and 0.3–0.5 ± 0.03 cm wide, which is significant for flowering and liberation of pollen grains. Preliminary results suggested that climatic factors, such as episodes of high or low temperature and the precipitation variation forcing the tree species to behave differently. Unearthing the climate-driven off-season flowering in other tree species alluded the stimulation of phytohormones, such as gibberellic and salicylic acid concentrations influencing the flowering time, therefore, needs further investigation in case of P. deltoides. Overall, this work provides early clues of changing climatic scenario altering the flowering pattern of a tropical forestry tree species. Keywords Populus deltoides . Catkins . Anomalous flowering . Phytohormones . Climate change . Tropical trees
Short communication In the current scenario of climate change, we have reached the threshold of a new-fangled era, where the climatic conditions are totally different and do not match with the environment that our ancestors were used to. The CO2 level has increased to 413 ppm in the atmosphere—correlating with the temperature rise of 0.98 °C (NOAA 2020). Adversely, the drastic fluctuations in climatic conditions are found to be one of the
compelling factors responsible for phenological changes in plants. Native to North America and Western USA (Taylor 2002), Populus deltoides Bartr ex. Marsh has been recognized as a very important and extensively used agroforestry species in the northern zone of India, occupying an area of 312,000 ha (Kumar and Singh 2012). This species has broken all the geographical barriers and is now well adapted to the vast range of climatic and soil conditions. In India, this fact is confirmed by the phenology, which suggested that the reproductive bud
* Maneesh S. Bhandari [email protected]
Rajendra K. Meena [email protected]
Garima Thapliyal [email protected] Ramu S. Vemanna [email protected]
Shailesh Pandey [email protected] 1
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