FLOWERS OF SPRING

by RAY FLEMING
MOTHER Nature in Great Britain has come to the rescue of the climate change scientists who are under such critical scrutiny at the moment. With a UN climate change meeting taking place in Bonn, Germany next week a report by British phenologists (who concern themselves with the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena) has established that British plants are flowering earlier now than at any time in the past twenty-five years and that the average flowering dates during this 25 year cycle have been earlier than in any previous period. Research based on 400'000 plant-flowering records of 405 species across Britain has led to these conclusions and also to the observation that Spring now arrives eleven days earlier than it did 30 years ago. This input into international consideration of a new climate change treaty may not quite compensate for the earlier highly-criticised predictions about the melting of Himalayan glaciers but it should help to lift the spirits of those scientists who feel that the tide of public opinion has been running against them since the shambles of the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen at the end of last year. The work goes on because the problem has not gone away -- indeed it intensifies day-by-day. It is nice to think that the performance of innocent flowering plants might help to get negotiations back on track.