The common blue violet, Viola sororia, is native to eastern North America, including Missouri. This wild flower blooms in early spring, sometimes in late summer, producing blue-violet or white flowers with purple veins. The name of the genus comes from the Latin name of the sweet-smelling flower. Its flowers attract butterflies and are pollinated mainly by bees. (Photo: Matthew Austin)
In many Missouri courtyards, a carpet of small purple or white violets is a sure sign of spring.
The research of Matthew Austin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Living Earth Collaborative at the University of Washington in St. Louis. Louis, found that climate change is affecting the way these common native flowers reproduce.
Austin
Violets reproduce both sexually, by cross-pollination of the showy flowers we know, and asexually, by self-planting less noticeable flowers that remain hidden near the base of the plant. This is called “mixed mating”. Although environmental factors determine the amount of sexual or asexual reproduction of a plant, no study had previously analyzed the impact of climate change on mixed mating.
Austin and his co-authors studied blue violet specimens from the Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium from 1875 to 2015 combined with temperature and precipitation data to see if flowering correlated with climate.
Among other findings, the scientists found that violets produced fewer showy flowers in environments with warmer temperatures and less rain, while those in colder climates with more rainfall produced more showy flowers. As temperatures warm up, violets are also blooming earlier in the year.
“It’s well documented that climate change is affecting the time of year when plants bloom,” Austin explained. “Finding that climate change is associated with increased sex flower production, relative to asexual flowers, in the common blue violet, this study reveals that climate change could be affecting not only when plants reproduce, but also how they reproduce “.
More information on the Missouri Botanical Garden website.