Dead or barely dead species. Should we keep them?

christophe-rd commented 4 months ago

Another issue to keep track of which species I decided to drop:

Acma

This is very disappointing as I really like this species and it did so well last year. However, the plants were much smaller and even in February it seemed like the shoot apical meristem froze. I am not sure about the cause of this (see attached pictures).

I would say that 10% of the replicates for Acma have budbursted "normally". However, the vast majority of the replicates have their apical meristem completely dead, but leaves are coming out from the trunk at lower levels (also see pictures). These replicates are far behind the ones that have their apical meristem intact.

Maybe another 10% is just completely dead.

@lizzieinvancouver @DeirdreLoughnan @FrederikBaumgarten, do you think it's worth keeping this species?

Segi

I was sure that most replicates from Segi were dead. However, they get greener and greener as the temperature rises! Therefore, Ken and I kept going with their phenological observations and we did the shoot elongation measurements on them today. The replicates in the chambers are still as brown as before, but I guess it's because of the temperature.

I took pictures of all the replicates to check how the colour will evolve.

Alru

Rooting the cuttings that we did has not worked. At this time of the spring (May 10), only a few replicates are currently bud-bursting.

lizzieinvancouver commented 4 months ago

@christophe-rd Thanks for the great overview and photos! I agree we keep going with SEGI and hope for the best and I think ALRU is hopeless.

ACMA is super disappointing ... I think we should probably drop it, but wonder what @FrederikBaumgarten thinks?

I also would be interested to hear what @ngoj1 thinks.

FrederikBaumgarten commented 4 months ago

@christophe-rd @lizzieinvancouver I agree with Lizzie. If only 10% of Acne are remaining in good shape, I agree that there is no point in using them. Evtl. keept them for next year. I wonder what happened. While the damage observed in Acne could be the result of a drought/sun burn during or after bud formation, the losses of sequoia (that were in perfect shape when I left them end of December) suggest something happened in winter/spring. Was there a crazy frost event?

ngoj1 commented 4 months ago

This pattern happened with ACMA actually also happened last year, though not as severely. Around 50% of the trees that Tolu and I did shoot measurements on had their lateral shoots recorded because their apical meristems died. However, those trees were probably old enough that lateral growth was practically of the same vigour and budburst time as the apical shoot, unlike these younger ones. I just have a couple questions about these ACMA as I think an informed speculation would then allow us to hopefully avoid this problem the next time around.

Were these small trees purchased from the same nursery as the big ones from last year?
When the trees arrived, were their meristems still in good shape or were they already decayed?
Did these trees arrive bare-root?
If so, when were they potted up, and how long did they spend out of soil?
If the trees arrived in pots, were they repotted at all?

In the Okanagan there was a severe drop in temperature at the end of January, and while I don't have access to Vancouver Airport data right now (though I'm literally in an airport as I type hahaha) I think we suffered something similar.

Not much to say on SEGI other than I'm glad they're doing well! The brown pigmentation in the chambers seems pretty expected to me, since the strong light + cold + drying of the soil probably made them a bit more defensive than they would normally be when warming up outside.

christophe-rd commented 4 months ago

Hi @lizzieinvancouver and @FrederikBaumgarten! Thank you for your quick replies. I think I will drop Acma then.

@ngoj1 , my thanks also for your very detailed reply! Below are my answers:

Not much to say on SEGI other than I'm glad they're doing well! The brown pigmentation in the chambers seems pretty expected to me, since the strong light + cold + drying of the soil probably made them a bit more defensive than they would normally be when warming up outside.

I agree about the light and cold. However, do you suspect that soil got dry? So far, it seems like the soil remained moist from one weekly watering to another.

I moved out Poba and Pist from the chambers today. Do you think we should move Segi soon? My concern is that they are not very developed at Totem, so perhaps keeping them would give us a bigger difference between treatments.

Were these small trees purchased from the same nursery as the big ones from last year?

Yes, from Peel's nursery (almost all the trees come from there). However, in 2023, Acma was in 2-gal pots and in 2024, they were in 1-gal pots.

When the trees arrived, were their meristems still in good shape or were they already decayed?

I will let @FrederikBaumgarten answer this.

Did these trees arrive bare-root?

No potted in 1-gal pots.

If so, when were they potted up, and how long did they spend out of soil?

Above

If the trees arrived in pots, were they repotted at all? No, I was planning on repotting them at the end of May.

FrederikBaumgarten commented 4 months ago

Meristems seemed fine to me when they arrived, but sometimes hard to tell...

lizzieinvancouver commented 4 months ago

In the Okanagan there was a severe drop in temperature at the end of January, and while I don't have access to Vancouver Airport data right now (though I'm literally in an airport as I type hahaha) I think we suffered something similar.

There was a cold-snap in mid-January. The dip in temperatures was not as dramatic as in the Okanagan but a lot of people reported incidental bud damage from it, so that could have been the cause ... but impossible to say since we were not monitoring them then.

christophe-rd / fuelinex