If you have eye on weather, you may be a phenologist

By Tim Baker, MU Regional Horticulturist
It’s springtime and whether you know it or not, you are probably exercising your phenological talents. If you find yourself closely watching the progression of spring, you are most likely a genuine phenologist.
Phenology is the study of the influence of climate on biological events such as animal migrations and flowering in plants.
This time of year, we closely watch the progression of budding and flowering, with an eye on the weather forecast. We are all too familiar with orchard crop losses due to late frosts during full bloom.
The phenologist asks, “What environmental conditions control the development of buds and flowering?” If we can understand the principles involved, there might be hope for controlling the timing of blooms and preventing crop losses.
Unfortunately, it is not an exact science at this point, although we discover more every year. Temperature is an obvious factor that can speed up or slow down the bud development and time of blooming. The rates of chemical processes are always temperature-dependent and warmer temperatures speed up the plant’s physiology. Another factor is day length. In addition, most woody species in our part of the world have chilling requirements to meet.
Even if you get warm days in early winter, the trees will not grow leaves or bloom, since their chilling requirement has not been met.
Once the requirement has been satisfied, they are ready to break dormancy when the weather turns warm.
Other factors can complicate phenology. When I was working in southeast Missouri, we had a study at a peach orchard near Campbell that was looking at the effects of different rootstocks on bloom dates.
The rootstock came from varieties of peach trees that had been specially selected for growing good root systems. In studies like these, the cultivar of peach that you want to harvest (called the scion) is grafted onto the rootstock. One entry in the trial had an interstem, which is another variety, grafted between the rootstock and the scion. This had been shown to delay blooms for up to 7-15 days in other states where it has been studied.
Our study did not find that much of a delay in peach blossoming, which was disappointing. But that is what research is all about.
In my next column, I will continue this discussion. www.usanpn.org/.