First Flowerings In UK Now Average Nearly One Month Earlier Than Pre-1986 Average
Plants are flowering a month earlier in the UK as the climate heats up, a study has found. The researchers examined 420,000 recorded dates of first flowering for more than 400 species, dating to 1793. The average date for the first blooms was about 12 May up to 1986, but since then the date has been pushed forward to 16 April.
Herbaceous plants saw the biggest advance, producing flowers an average of 32 days earlier. Trees blossomed 14 days sooner and shrubs advanced by 10 days. The researchers think faster-reproducing herbaceous plants can more easily adapt to the warming climate.
During the most recent recorded year, 2019, spring arrived 42 days earlier than the pre-1986 average. The difference between flowering times in the north of the UK, above Stoke-on-Trent, and the south has shrunk from nine days before 1986 to four days afterwards. In the period after the mid-80s there has been accelerated global heating caused by fossil-fuel-burning and other human activities.
“The results are truly alarming, because of the ecological risks associated with earlier flowering times,” said Prof Ulf Büntgen, at the University of Cambridge, who led the research. “When plants flower too early, a late frost can kill them – a phenomenon that most gardeners will have experienced at some point.” But the even bigger risk is “ecological mismatch”, he said, when plants and hibernating or migrating insects, birds and other wildlife are no longer synchronised. “That can lead species to collapse if they can’t adapt quickly enough.” Such mismatches are already being seen, for example, between orchids and bees and great tit chicks and their crucial caterpillar food.
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/02/flowers-arriving-month-early-uk-climate-heats-up-bloom-insects-birds
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