Topsy-turvy weather confuses plants and animals

MODERN meteorological jargon includes such terms as ‘snow-bombs’, ‘storm-bombs’, ‘bomb-cyclones’, but, as yet, does not include ‘heat-bombs’. On Jan 7, Sydney, Australia recorded its highest temperature, at 47 degrees Celsius, since 1938.

Flying fox bats, mammals like ourselves, collapsed and fell from trees in heaps on the ground. Their brains had boiled. On the northern section of the Great Barrier Reef, there is the largest population ever recorded of female green turtles. The sex of these animals, after hatching, are determined by sea temperatures and thus there is seemingly a ‘crash’, sooner than later, of their total reproductive numbers.

In the US state of Florida, imported pet iguanas suffered snow and freezing conditions and keeled over, while in a swamp park in North Carolina, alligators were seen as ice breakers. Apparently, this process of the alligators’ snouts poking through the ice is called ‘brumation’. As they sense that their watery environment is freezing, so they come up for air and allow ice to form around their bodies thus lowering their body temperatures thereby reaching a state almost like hibernation.

That same weekend, snow even fell in parts of the northern Sahara Desert, disrupted 200 million people in parts of China, and led to 80 deaths in northern India and Nepal through sub-zero temperatures.

Crazy weather

Last year was a strange one weather-wise for the UK and particularly in Southwest England where plants and animals have been confused as seasonal weather variations gradually disappear. Plants have bloomed ahead of schedule and swarms of the potentially dangerous Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish have been seen in coastal waters.

In Cornwall, for the first time ever, dolphins have colonised St Ives Bay and Mount’s Bay to breed. After an absence of over 50 years and with the seas getting increasingly warmer, the Atlantic blue fin tuna has returned to coastal areas. Various shark species, until now unknown in British waters, have been recorded.

As a Cornishman, by birth, I can well remember, in the mid-20th century, tons of ‘early’ potatoes and flowers being despatched by overnight trains to then Covent Garden Market, in London. There, they fetched high prices for the rest of England had yet to receive higher temperatures.

Cornwall, because of its most southwestern location is but a promontory, 50 degrees north of the Equator, and has benefitted with the warm ocean current-the Gulf Stream Drift-sweeping its shores and thus bringing warm water in winter time. As the sea takes five times longer to heat up as land and five times longer to cool down, the highest temperatures are in August (summer) and the lowest in February (winter). In the latter month, temperatures rarely fall to below 7 degrees Celsius.

The threshold for most plant growth is 6 degrees Celsius, meaning that crops are able to grow for much of the time. Last December proved to be a bumper market for narcissi flowers, grown on south-facing slopes, and ‘exported’ to the Bristol, Manchester and London markets. Other parts of Cornwall have become increasingly subtropical with fields of sunflowers and even a tea plantation, but increasing temperatures bring their own innocuous destruction in terms of crop pests.

Garden flowers as climate indicators

With only two frosts this winter, in my Somerset garden, flowers are bursting into bud and primroses (Primula vulgaris) are appearing in hedgerows. In sheltered woodlands, wild daffodils (Narcissus pseudonarcissus) are in bloom. As Cornish children in the 1950s, my sister and I would always pick a bunch of primroses from the hedgerows to give to our mother on Easter Sunday. Easter falls in March or April, so I am somewhat perplexed, two counties away from Cornwall, as to why my hedgerow primroses are in bloom in mid-January.

Their pale yellow petals 2.5cm have deep yellow centres, with stems up to 10cm in height surrounded by a rosette of bright green corrugated leaves are sure signs of spring. With the Devon county border only 500 metres from my house, Devonshire has declared the primrose as its ‘county flower’. In Medieval Britain, farmers would place bunches of primroses on the floor of their cowsheds on May Day (May 1) to protect cattle from witches at a time they were perceived to be most active. How the climate has changed!

Daffodils may be divided into two species – wild daffodils, which have shorter stems and smaller flowers, and garden daffodils. By careful breeding and selection, there now more than 10,000 named cultivated varieties.

Narcissus, the genus of these bulbous plants, derives its name from a boy in Greek mythology. He was told he would always be happy as long as he never saw his face, but one day he saw his reflection in a pool of water, fell in love with it and pined away, leaving a yellow flower on the spot where he died.

Mowing grass

Each October, I normally stop cutting my lawns but this winter, I have continued cutting them at fortnightly intervals. Grass ceases to grow when temperatures fall below 4 degrees Celsius, but this month I have noticed, normally summer flowers, daisies (Bellis perennis) and buttercups (Ranunculus repens), growing in full bloom amongst the turf. Both plants thrive in strong sunlight and heat, and the daisy is a natural light meter: in full sunshine, the flower head opens but in cloudy weather it folds, and at night-time it closes completely. Hence its name is a contraction of ‘day’s-eye’.

Just as I am writing this, a fruit fly hit my screen. These insects abound in summer months but as the old adage goes, “Two swallows don’t make a summer.”

Normally a hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus) hibernates for winter when the food supply is less plentiful. From last December until this month, hedgehog rescue sanctuaries in the UK have been inundated with newly-born hoglets abandoned by their mothers in gardens. Normally (if this is still an appropriate word), hedgehog babies are born in late spring.

What about trees?

Scientific researchers at The British Woodland Trust Charity have suggested that spring in the UK began last December, three months earlier than expected. Hazel trees (Corylus avellana) were observed last October with catkins growing on their twiglets. This was five months before they would normally appear at the beginning of March.

In mid-December, elder tree (Sambucus nigra) buds began to burst open, four months before their average date in the second week in March. These early appearances may seem anomalous, but tree growth shuts down when temperatures fall below 6 degrees Celsius.

Surely, these are reminders that seasons are not as uniform as they used to be. The British Woodland Trust Charity is urging ordinary folk to send records of the seasons to help track how animals and plants are adapting to a changing climate and to provide even more robust data for meteorologists. Clearly, in the UK, there is a delicate balance for species and our seasons.

Sabah and Sarawak

Whilst spanning 5 degrees of latitude north of the Equator from the southernmost point in Sarawak to the northernmost point in Sabah, technically we experience a tropical rainforest climate with little seasonal variations. The fact that there were once, and in living memory, two distinctive monsoon seasons, suggesting distinct seasonal weather patterns. These seasons appear to be in the process of becoming more blurred with increasingly higher temperatures and more persistent rainfall.

Farmers in highland and lowland areas of both states and amateur gardeners must have witnessed changes in the behavioural patterns of animals and plants over the last 30 or so years with older folk with strong memories of time past. It would be useful, I’m sure, to Malaysian meteorologists, the Malaysian Nature Society and to agricultural agencies if such information could be fed into their databanks. As Bob Dylan recorded in his 1960s hit record, “The times they are a changing”!