Author Topic: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?  (Read 725 times)

lajos93

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Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« on: May 03, 2023, 01:39:26 PM »
...than temperate climate trees?

Its as if tropical fruit trees are unable to "do the work" of bringing flowers, leaves at lower temps whereas temperate trees (apples, plums, apricot, pears etc.. ) do that with ease..
What is the science behind this?

Interestingly enough it not only affects tropical fruit trees but non-tropicals as well that came from the tropics, subtropics (but somehow evolved to handle colder temps eg: Asimina Triloba). They are really starting to wake up once night time temps go above 10C/50F

Can it be that as science advances we'll be able to manipulate whatever that is causing it to wake up early (and thrive), or push it with selective breeding?
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Enkis

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2023, 02:13:07 PM »
I think when plants adapt to a new environment usually at the same time become also dependant on it. Pawpaws actually require some chill hours to thrive.
Peach trees won't do good where mangos grow, no plant is able to live everywhere without significant adaptations.
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K-Rimes

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #2 on: May 03, 2023, 02:24:23 PM »
A tropical plant is usually bombarded with heavy sun, rain, and warm temperatures year round. They don't need to be such strong growers when the climate around them is steady. A deciduous tree really needs to pump hard in the growth season to maximize its size and production.

A tropical plant in a variable climate or one that is much colder than it's used to will be suffering most of the year.

Makes sense to me.

Enkis

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #3 on: May 03, 2023, 03:02:36 PM »
Efficiency probably depends on many factors. Just like an animal evolving on an island without predators can become "lazy" a plant could be not so efficient if it can survive anyway.

Plants in rainforests have almost sterile soil but they live in a highly competitive environment. Plants try to outgrow each other to access more light. Those plants are probably quite efficient i guess.

Also plants living in deserts might be efficient in some other ways.
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pagnr

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2023, 05:28:06 PM »
A tropical plant is usually bombarded with heavy sun, rain, and warm temperatures year round. They don't need to be such strong growers when the climate around them is steady. A deciduous tree really needs to pump hard in the growth season to maximize its size and production.

A tropical plant in a variable climate or one that is much colder than it's used to will be suffering most of the year.

Makes sense to me.

I would like to add a different take on that.
The tropics is a tough environment. Under rainforest canopy it is a bit more pleasant, if not fungal balmy.
The trees in the open and the exposed canopy foliage is getting hammered. Just like us if we spend all day in the open on the tropical beach or working in a garden.
Many tropical plant species have red pigmented growth tips, UV filters / sunscreen.
Roots are often subject to water logging and fungal attack.
Seedlings and all plants are subject to intense competition from other plants, and also foraging from insects and animals.
Many plants carry toxins to ward this foraging off, leading to our use of tropical plant medicines, drugs, insecticides.
Many tropical plants adapt readily to different environments, subtropics, temperate, indoor.
Having collected and grown many Nth Qld tropical plant seeds, I was often surprised how tough some from the true "Wet Tropics" are when grown from seed in temperate Victoria under cold pot soil winter conditions.

K-Rimes

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #5 on: May 03, 2023, 05:41:38 PM »
A tropical plant is usually bombarded with heavy sun, rain, and warm temperatures year round. They don't need to be such strong growers when the climate around them is steady. A deciduous tree really needs to pump hard in the growth season to maximize its size and production.

A tropical plant in a variable climate or one that is much colder than it's used to will be suffering most of the year.

Makes sense to me.

I would like to add a different take on that.
The tropics is a tough environment. Under rainforest canopy it is a bit more pleasant, if not fungal balmy.
The trees in the open and the exposed canopy foliage is getting hammered. Just like us if we spend all day in the open on the tropical beach or working in a garden.
Many tropical plant species have red pigmented growth tips, UV filters / sunscreen.
Roots are often subject to water logging and fungal attack.
Seedlings and all plants are subject to intense competition from other plants, and also foraging from insects and animals.
Many plants carry toxins to ward this foraging off, leading to our use of tropical plant medicines, drugs, insecticides.
Many tropical plants adapt readily to different environments, subtropics, temperate, indoor.
Having collected and grown many Nth Qld tropical plant seeds, I was often surprised how tough some from the true "Wet Tropics" are when grown from seed in temperate Victoria under cold pot soil winter conditions.

Definitely agree with your take on it as well. I personally am prawn status after about 20 minutes of tropical sun and could not stand the whole day in it like these trees do.

I guess my point was that those slow growing characteristics we note is also probably not the case when they are in their native habitat. I can't believe how tolerant many sub tropical things are, but then at the same time, I can't believe how many tropical things I've killed trying to push them to work in my climate.

cassowary

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #6 on: May 03, 2023, 11:06:33 PM »
Efficiency probably depends on many factors. Just like an animal evolving on an island without predators can become "lazy" a plant could be not so efficient if it can survive anyway.

Plants in rainforests have almost sterile soil but they live in a highly competitive environment. Plants try to outgrow each other to access more light. Those plants are probably quite efficient i guess.

Also plants living in deserts might be efficient in some other ways.

Absurd! :D
Where is the evidence that "Plants in rainforests have almost sterile soil "

I can not see any evidence for this, neither in my biology book or real life.
Durio zibethinus have association with arbuscular mychorizea and the majority of rainforest trees have association with myco or/and bac.
https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20219928046

And there is insects in the rainforest soil when I disturb it. There is even nematodes in the rainforest soil.
Rainforest soil is teeming with microbes and animals!
If this where not true then it wouldn't be impossible to walk thru a rainforest because all the litter would just pile up several meters without degradation (it would just oxidize and pile up). And eventually the forest would die because the cycle is not completed.
There are life above the soil (mulch) and also in the soil and some go up and down between the two.

Desertification happens when the environment is getting toward sterile (no life) as far as biology goes.
rainforest soil is the anthesis of sterile. It is the grand finale in microbiology!
Rain = water = water is a form of life energy.

---
I don't think efficiency is the right word to describe the phenomenon that is being described. 
Adaptation would be more suitable as other posters have said.

OP, You can also turn it around and ask why some temperate tree's can't grow as fast as tropical trees. The answer is in the flipped question :D

Plants don't have endocrine systems like animals do and thus their growth is limited by osmosis.
They have "hormones" but it's a lot different.
Temperature affect water and that will affect osmosis for plants so temperate adapted plants might posses the ability to amend water so that osmosis works well at lower temperatures.
All nutrients and solids (metabolites) inside a plant have to be in water solution in order to move so the difference between tropicals and temperate plants might be how water is treated inside the plant or by associated microbiology on the outside.
Not just carbohydrate levels but other substances to affect osmosis.

"The process of osmosis accelerates when the temperature rises just as it does with any process of general diffusion"
https://www.reference.com/science-technology/temperature-affect-osmosis-9c1a268b7637bbb

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Enkis

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #7 on: May 04, 2023, 02:21:03 AM »
Absurd! :D
Where is the evidence that "Plants in rainforests have almost sterile soil "

Maybe "sterile" was not the best word to use. I meant it's generally not much fertile as it's poor in nutrients.
One of the most cited reasons for this is that nutrients are often washed away by rain.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2023, 02:23:06 AM by Enkis »
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Daintree

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #8 on: May 04, 2023, 08:30:24 AM »
I guess I always presumed that most "natural" soils are only moderately fertile, and that very fertile soil was a product of human intervention, to push growth...

One thing I find fascinating about tropical trees is that since they grow year round with no totally dormant period, like temperate trees, we can't use growth rings to determine their age. 

Also, since many tropical trees have recalcitrant seeds, we don't currently have the means to "bank" the seeds.  Guess some scientists are working on that. Hope they get it figured out before the zombie apocalypse - I'll be sad without lychees!

Carolyn

tru

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #9 on: May 04, 2023, 09:53:33 AM »
2 things I’d like to say

1) the biggest thing that people forget about with tropicals is light; plants regulate hormones based on the % they make when it’s light and dark. Whereas we have more light in the summer and less in the winter in temperate areas, places near the equator are in perpetual springtime

2) rainforest soil is generally very depleted. Plants in a rainforest will not anchor themselves to the ground as much, throwing roots out into the composting debris from other trees above the topsoil instead. There’s a lot of videos of people exploring the Amazon and being blown away by roots growing upward and into the walking paths
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pagnr

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #10 on: May 04, 2023, 04:02:03 PM »
2 things I’d like to say

1) the biggest thing that people forget about with tropicals is light; plants regulate hormones based on the % they make when it’s light and dark. Whereas we have more light in the summer and less in the winter in temperate areas, places near the equator are in perpetual springtime

2) rainforest soil is generally very depleted. Plants in a rainforest will not anchor themselves to the ground as much, throwing roots out into the composting debris from other trees above the topsoil instead. There’s a lot of videos of people exploring the Amazon and being blown away by roots growing upward and into the walking paths

I think you could consider the soil to be low nutrient, but the nutrients being cycled in the leaf litter and biologically active top layer, including microbes, fungi, tiny animal life etc.
As you say, there is a concentration of feeder roots into this layer.
Also ariel roots for some species.
Many tree species are also heavily buttressed, and others must be anchored enough to stand cyclones, waterlogged soils that expand and lose structure.

Some tropical plant species are also day length sensitive, and only really go into flowering and growth at the equal periods.
We had a very mild winter here last year. Not too cold and warm at night.
A lot of Tropicals and Subtropicals really flushed out better than ever before.
Even Citrus seem to get a much better growth flush when night temps are high and closer to day temps.
There are probably systems for  Tropical plants to regulate their growth.
A lot produce fruit and seeds to correspond with the Tropical wet season,
especially those species with short viability seeds that need to hit the wet ground and start growing ASAP.
This is obviously regulated by some mechanism.
Others with hard seeds or animal dispersed seeds, can produce fruit in the drier months.

Are Temperate plants more efficient?
Not really, but they have systems to stop them wasting energy on growth that will succumb to cold.
As many may have seen, deciduous fruit trees are being thrown out of whack by climate change seasonal variably.
There is a lot of off season flowering, early flushing late winter, fruit ripening time shifts etc.
This is playing havoc with commercial growers, who can't predict when fruit will be ripe,
and varieties overlapping each other to markets causing a fruit glut, and labour shortages.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2023, 04:33:36 PM by pagnr »

cassowary

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #11 on: May 04, 2023, 06:09:43 PM »
Absurd! :D
Where is the evidence that "Plants in rainforests have almost sterile soil "

Maybe "sterile" was not the best word to use. I meant it's generally not much fertile as it's poor in nutrients.
One of the most cited reasons for this is that nutrients are often washed away by rain.

Nutrients are cycled fast by biology, it's released when the biology is terminated such as clear cutting  or a natural disaster. That's why slash and burn gives amazing yields short term.

tru.

2. Rainforest trees anchors themselves with each other, it's a very strong anchour as long they have each other. And some rainforest trees like the the Illawarra flame tree have a persistent taproot.

enkis.
Yeah desert palnts are very efficient becuase the use trichomes to harvest water, gas and nutrients.

"Its as if tropical fruit trees are unable to "do the work" of bringing flowers, leaves at lower temps whereas temperate trees (apples, plums, apricot, pears etc.. ) do that with ease..
What is the science behind this?"
It might have to do with the plants ability to regulate osmosis is a certain way in certain temperature spectrums.
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nattyfroootz

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Re: Tropical climate trees are "less efficient" by nature?
« Reply #12 on: May 04, 2023, 09:04:47 PM »
Ultimately I think it comes down to plants evolving different functional traits that help them to survive their environment. Such as plants that are capable of withstanding freezing temperatures to prevent cavitation which would result in damaged xylem. I did a thesis studying the evolutionary biology of serpentine endemic plants which have evolved to only grow on toxic soil substrates. A lot of variables could have been at play as to why, results were inconcuslive.  Ultimately though, these plants have evolved to grow in different environments with many variables that have influenced their growth. 
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