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.
On the other hand, trees may suffer when they’ve known only wet conditions and are blindsided by droughts. Pines in Switzerland, for example, have needles that appear to acclimatize to wet periods in ways that make them more vulnerable to drought, another group of scientists reported last year.
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