Where Are Henry David Thoreau’s Plants Now?
[Thoreau’s] journals offer an unparalleled phenological record — that is, a log of the timing of events, like a first flower or leaf growth. Looking back through Thoreau’s logs, as well as those of later botanists, Primack and Miller-Rushing found the first flowering date for 43 of the most common species has moved up by an average of 10 days.
For a while, I kept a log of the first snow in the mountain town where I was living. And it came later and later. So came the last snow of the season. Looking back now, after more than 10 years, I can see winter really comes almost 1 month later, spring almost vanished. This year we went straight from 5-7°C one day to 20-22°C the next one.
Weather goes crazy.