Natural History Wanderings

Canadian Poplars Response to Drought is Environmental Not Just Genetic

Canadian researchers recently found that identical clones of Poplar trees had different responses to drought when planted in different locations. Response time to drought appears to be influenced by where the trees were planted.  

This research validated the “nursery effect, which is when trees with the exact same genes raised in different nurseries display different responses to drought. The reason for the different responses is believed to be epigenetics, which is the action of some genes being expressed over others by a mechanism other than DNA. In the cases above the it is believed that the action is caused by different environmental factor

  Read more at:

• Trees and drought: Cloned trees raised in separate places react differently to drought – latimes.com.
• A Tale of Two Trees: Epigenetics Makes Clones Diverge | 80beats (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Trees don”t forget their roots just like humans (news.bioscholar.com)
• New research shows forest trees remember their roots (eurekalert.org)