Autumn has barely set in, and temperatures are still very high for the season. This is causing upheavals in nature, as some trees have lost their bearings and are starting to bud. A phenomenon that is set to become increasingly common as a result of global warming.
In 2023, autumn doesn’t come and summer eclipses the fall season. Trees don’t feel the cold. And what’s even crazier is that, despite the season, they’re still very green, and some are even blooming. A very real effect of global warming and the very high temperatures of recent weeks and the coming weekend.
North of Paris, in the forest of Fontainebleau, the consequences are striking. Isabelle Juin, an ecologist and tree specialist, points to a large oak that seems to have suffered from the heat: “You can see that its leaves are not at all as green as its neighbour, which obviously suffered much less. They’re already turning yellow”, she explains.
Some trees get sick from repeated heatwaves, while others think they’re still in summer and are still green when they should be turning red.
To study the effects of global warming on trees, Isabelle Juin has set up the Observatoire des saisons, asking individuals to report anomalies in their gardens. For the past few days, she has been receiving messages from apple and cherry blossom trees. And she’s no longer surprised: “This is typically what we’ve been observing since the early 2000s, and very frequently since 2015”.
So should you be worried about seeing your cherry tree in bloom in your garden? “You probably won’t have a crop next year, so it’s going to weaken the tree since it’s going to spend energy producing flowers that will ultimately be of no use to us” replies the scientist.
It’s certain that temperatures will drop in a few weeks’ time, but the damage has already been done, and we need to take action now. The cold will eventually return, so these flowers won’t bear any fruit. Trees that are a little disoriented have a hard time adapting to climate change, just as we do.
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