Antarctica’s 2 native flowering plants responded differently to 7 years of warming

PC: Nelida Pohl/ BBC Wildlife Antarctica has only two native flowering plants, and both have spent years facing a warmer environment. A new seven-year field study found that Antarctic hairgrass (Deschampsia antarctica) and Antarctic pearlwort (Colobanthus quitensis) responded to long-term warming in different ways. Researchers placed open-top chambers around plants on King George Island to create warmer conditions and compared them with plants growing outside the chambers.According to research published in Physiologia Plantarum titled ‘Contrasting Hydraulic-Photosynthetic Strategies Sustain Antarctic Vascular Plants Under Long-Term Warming’, the two species followed contrasting physiological pathways under sustained warming.How did Antarctica’s two flowering plants respond to long-term warmingAccording to the BBC Wildlife, Antarctica is home to just two native vascular plants: Antarctic hairgrass and Antarctic pearlwort. Both are small plants that grow in wet, protected spaces between rocks, with clumps reaching around 5 cm in height. In 2012, researchers began a seven-year experiment on King George Island, an island just north of the Antarctic Peninsula, to understand how these pl...