Climate Change Takes Bloom Off Wildflowers | LiveScience Annotated

By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 14 March 2008 09:08 am ET

Fewer flowers may grace the slopes of the Rocky Mountains as global warming’s earlier springtimes make blooms more vulnerable, a new study suggests.

David Inouye of the University of Maryland used data gathered in the Rockies from 1973 to the present to see how earlier spring thaws were affecting three flowers common to the mountain range.

An individual sunflower can live to be up to 75 years old, Inouye said, “but we find that these perennials are not producing enough seeds to make the next generation of plants.”

“What will replace these colorful flowers? We don’t know,” Inouye said. “But we know that many animals depend upon them, and so the outcome could be quite dramatic.”