Spring-ing ahead

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APPLES

First flower date(Jan. 1 equals Day 1)

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(Geneva, Ontario County)

SOURCES: MARK SCHWARTZ, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MILWAUKEE; DAVID W. WOLFE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY; WORLD DATA CENTER FOR PALEOCLIMATOLOGY, BOULDER, COLO.

Data from studies on three different plants in three different regions of the state would seem to indicate an earlier flowering of the season. Data represent calendar date of first flowering of each species.

BY BRYN NELSONSTAFF WRITER

The old-fashioned lilac bush-es once grew thick on the farm-steads around Richard Hen-drickson’s home. The 93-year-old Bridgehampton resident re-members how the denseblooms often ended up packedin ice, and then on the grave-stones of Brooklyn cemeteriesfor Memorial Day.Since 1967, an old-fashionedlilac bush with lavender blos-soms and an intense aroma haswhispered of a different histo-ry in the backyard of the vener-able East End weather watcherand retired farmer.During the first 18 years ofHendrickson’s botanical obser-vations, his “Red Rothomagen-sis” lilac never unfurled itsleaves before the end of March— except in 1976 and 1977, theonly years it also revealed itsfirst flowers more than twoweeks before Memorial Day.But an early start to his lilacseason is now the rule ratherthan the exception. From 1997to 2002, its leaves emerged bythe end of March five times,and twice within the month’sfirst two weeks. And after sev-

eral years of early May flowers,Hendrickson saw the bush’sfirst ever April blooms in 2002.Springtime in Bridgehamp-ton, it seems, is breaking free ofthe calendar.The year-to-year debut ofspring leaves and flowers canfluctuate wildly, due in part toannual variations in tempera-ture and rainfall. But longergrowth records for lilac bushes,grapevines, apple trees and ahost of other plants have begunsuggesting the same story: theNortheast is getting warmer.In the mid-1960s, the U.S. De-partment of Agriculture fund-ed a project that installed thesame clone of Persian lilac,“Red Rothomagensis,” in selectyards and gardens as a sort ofliving Farmer’s Almanac.“If the lilacs bloomed earlier,it could mean we had a milderwinter, so look out for poten-tial insect outbreaks,” saidDavidWolfe, a professor of hor-ticulture at Cornell University.Early blooms also could advisefarmers on when to plant theirwheat and guide the ChicagoFutures Market by suggestingwhether yields would be early.The records from 72 sites inthe Northeast suggested some-

Buds! Records showing that plants, leaves andflowers are emerging earlier in year suggestthat climate in Northeast is getting warmer

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(Bridgehampton)LILACS

First flower date

NOTE: No data available1986-1987 and 1996

thing else toWolfe and collabo-rators. Since the mid-1960s,lilac blooms have arrived fourdays earlier, on average.Similar records gleaned fromgrape and apple growers in up-state New York revealed aneven bigger trend: a six- to eight-day jump start to the season.“We can anticipate that ifthey’re responding, then otherliving things are responding,”he said, “even though we don’thave good records for that.”

Half-century of warmingIn 2004, University of NewHampshire researcher Cam-eron Wake and a colleaguecompiled as much data as theycould about climate change inNew England.Temperatures, ice dates, dayswith snow, growing seasons andother indicators together sug-gested a warming trend over thepast half-century.“And perhaps more shocking-ly, it showed an increase in therate of warming over the last30 years,” Wake said.The data haven’t allowed sci-entists to say whether suchchange is due to human inter-vention, a larger point of con-flict between many researchersand government officials. But,Wake said, “all of the warmingis certainly consistent with aglobe that has been warmed bygreenhouse gases.”

In a conference call lastmonth, Wolfe and Wake joinedtwo colleagues in christeningMarch 13 the new start to “natu-ral spring” in the Northeast.“They say, ‘Spring forward,fall back,’ but spring has al-ready sprung ahead,” saidAdam Markham, executive di-rector of the nonprofit environ-mental group Clean Air – CoolPlanet. “Biology is not waiting

for the equinox now.”To make sense of the grow-ing trend and potential fallout,researchers are trying to estab-lish what’s known as a nationalphenology network. The inte-grated database of biologicallandmarks, such as when specif-ic plants bloom, can be linkedto temperature and provideone measure of climate change.Mark Schwartz, a professor

of geography and a climatolo-gist at the University of Wis-consin-Milwaukee, said clonedlilac bushes have been goodchoices for such studies be-cause the hardy and non-inva-sive plants have well-definedstages of growth every spring.But recording a lilac’s firstleaves and blooms, as scientistsknow, captures only one snap-shot of how plants might be re-

sponding to a warmer world.Studies in the lab have sug-gested that different speciescan vary dramatically in howthey react to rising levels of car-bon dioxide, the main gaslinked to global warming. Andbecause plants are often thelinchpins of complex communi-ties, a small change may lead tomuch larger and often unpre-dictable effects onmicrobes, in-sects, birds and even humans.

Bad news for good parasiteA study conducted in Con-necticut and 14 other sites inNorth and South America sug-gested that weather extremeslinked to warming trends mayinterfere with a parasiticwasp’s ability to find its cater-pillar prey. What’s bad for theparasite is a boon for the crop-munching insect and a head-ache for farmers and gardenerscontending with a surge in thecaterpillar population.Other experiments suggestthat higher levels of carbon di-oxide may act like fertilizer forragweed, prompting more mis-ery during the pollen-inducedallergy season. And research-ers say a forward shift in flow-ering may help a plant avoid alate-emerging pest, but throwthe plant out of sync with itsmain insect pollinators.

See SPRING on A36

NEWSDAY PHOTO / DANIEL GOODRICH

Richard Hendrickson of Bridgehampton has recorded the budding of lilac bushes since 1967.

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BY BRYN NELSONSTAFF WRITER

On a chilly March afternoon,Chuck Peters describes a tideof inevitable change while sur-veying the still-bare branchesof the largest remaining wood-land in New York City.Now part of the New YorkBotanical Garden in the Bronx,the 40-acre parcel of old-growth forest has seen betterdays, according to the botani-cal garden ecologist.“What I noticed as a foresterand ecologist is that the forestis essentially falling apart,” Pe-ters says, indicating a slew offallen hemlocks, oaks and otherold-guard shade trees, whosepassing is opening up new gapsin the canopy. “What is comingup bears no resemblance towhat has fallen down.”Like much of the human pop-ulation around it, the wood’snewcomers hail from aroundthe world. By some estimates,invasive species now comprisenearly 30 percent of the woods.Is warming hastening theirspread? Perhaps, Peters says,but it’s only one in a long list ofchanges wrought by humans.“Heavy metals, acid rain —whatever you want, we’ve gotit,” he says. “As an ecologist,I’m happy that there are treesthat can still function and growunder these conditions.”The plant known as Japaneseknotweed may be invasive, for

example, but Peters says it’salso protecting a once-barebank of the Bronx River fromfurther erosion.“What else would you plantthat can thrive under the cur-rent conditions?” he asks, point-ing out the brown tangle ofknotweed beneath a bridge. Heknows that some would like torestore the forest to the way itwas 200 years ago. “My re-sponse is that you’d have to putthe Bronx back the way it was200 years ago,” he says.If the “pulse of the forest” ischanging, though, Peters wouldat least like to measure it. Threeyears ago, he began a phenologystudy to keep track of seasonalchanges in representatives of 20tree species — 10 natives and 10non-natives — near the wood’smeandering path. Now in itsfourth season, the project has en-listed the help of volunteerswhooften spend their lunch hoursdocumenting when the treesleaf out and flower and howlong the growing season lasts.By tabulating the trends inmultiple species, Peters hopesto assess the behavior of the en-tire forest.“Something very importantis happening,” he says. “The[trees] that have dominatedthis forest for probably severalhundred years are steppingdown and something else is tak-ing their places. And I’m OKwith that, but we can’t denythat it’s happening.”

As worldchanges, sodoes forest

NEWSDAY PHOTO / BRUCE GILBERT

New York Botanical Garden ecologist Chuck Peters with garden publicist George Shakespear,left, research assistant Dawn Ward and Lehman College doctoral student Meng Hsueh, right.

“Even a week earlier thanusual — that is sufficient inmost cases to alter entirely thesituation with other plants andanimals,” saidMassimo Pigliuc-ci, an ecologist at Stony BrookUniversity. The difficulty is inpredicting exactly how those re-lationships will change, eitherfor the better or worse.“The answer, unfortunately,in a lot of ecology is, ‘It de-pends,’ ” he said.Julie Seghrouchni, a horti-culture specialist at the Cor-nell Cooperative Extension ofNassau County, said a warm-ing trend and extended grow-ing season in the Northeastcould favor warm-seasonfruits and vegetables such aswatermelon, tomatoes andpeppers, while hamperingcool-season crops such as po-tatoes and cabbage.The wine industry in up-state New York has flourishedwithin the past three decades,

according to Cornell Universi-ty’s Wolfe, perhaps due inpart to fewer nights with tem-peratures below minus 12 de-grees Fahrenheit, when the se-vere cold can damage grapevines. But for apples, scien-tists have found that warmerwinters may actually be inter-fering with normal flower andfruit development.Despite a demand for simpleanswers — will climate changebe good or bad? — natureseems unwilling to cooperate.“To me, that means we needto move with sort of caution,”Pigliucci said. “Although someof the change might in fact bepositive, there’s always the pos-sibility of a catastrophe aroundthe corner.”

Dealing with warmer climateChuck Peters, an ecologistat the New York BotanicalGarden, said global warmingis but one of many human-me-diated actions altering land-scapes such as the garden’s

40-acre remnant of old-growth woodland in theBronx. Invasive species, acidrain, erosion, heavy metals: allhave taken their toll.A re-evaluation of conserva-tion priorities, he believes, maybe unavoidable given currentrealities. But others point outthat global warming is adding anew wrinkle to that task. Un-like invasive weeds or pollu-tion, warmer weather can’t bereversed at the local level, evenif the political will is there.“You can’t even mitigate it,”said Camille Parmesan, a biolo-gist at the University of Texas.Climate change may have an in-tensely local impact, she said,“but it’s caused globally.”Any future decisions on glo-bal warming, nevertheless,may derive from very localconcerns. Observers in Japanand Washington, D.C., havedocumented shifts toward ear-lier blooms among their be-loved cherry trees. Forestryresearchers have fretted over

Minnesota’s iconic pines re-ceding northward due towarming, while scientists inCalifornia have predicted asimilar retreat of that state’sblue and valley oaks.

Spring changesOther observations are justbeginning, and may eventuallypoint toward climate change ora more complicated suite of fac-tors. On Long Island, a botanisthas noticed that the endan-gered pink flowers known assandplain gerardia seem to beblooming earlier in late sum-mer. An entomologist hasnoted that a plague of scale in-sects feasting on the East End’sornamental trees and prunedprivet hedges has worsened.And an ecologist has observedthat Japanese knotweed is rap-idly expanding its domainthroughout Suffolk County.Every spring, a million otherchanges catch the eyes of thosewho look. Amid an unusuallywarm January, a gardener no-

ticed the evergreen leaves ofpachysandra begin creepingacross her yard in Huntington,while another noted that witchhazel trees in Oyster Bay werebudding bymonth’s end.Snowdrops in Southoldburst into full bloom in mid-February. One month later,daffodils in Hempstead fol-lowed suit with a sea of yel-low and crocuses in Bridge-hampton obliged with a com-plementary blue.With March’s unseasonablycool weather, the buds on Ri-chard Hendrickson’s Persianlilac held fast until spring’s of-ficial start, its leaves yet tomake their seasonal debut.Most likely, the arrivals ofbuds, leaves and flowers acrossthe Island will be different nextyear, and the year after that.But over time, the patterns mayadd to the history of a bush inBridgehampton, one that haswhispered to a long-time ob-server that his world is indeedbecoming warmer.

SPRING from A18

Leaves, flowers coming out earlier

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