If the blossoms popping up in gardens across Australia’s east are anything to go by: spring has sprung early this year.
Australia has experienced an unusually warm and dry winter this year and, globally, July was the hottest month recorded.
The warmer conditions have been enough to trick our plants into thinking spring has arrived early, with flowers blooming in gardens across the country.
Magnolias – Australia’s floral equivalent of Punxsutawney Phil – have been spotted blooming in Victoria; Jacarandas in NSW have started to rain purple flowers onto streets, and Manchurian Pears sent into an early flower better resemble white cotton balls.
Staff at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney are seeing a number of their displays in bloom weeks ahead of schedule, including the spectacular pastel carpet of Western Australian paper daisies at the Mount Annan gardens.
“We’re definitely seeing it with some planting we’re doing across the gardens,” the Gardens’ chief scientist Brett Summerell told news.com.au.
“One of the big things, particularly, is the paper daisy. They’re about two weeks earlier than where we’ve had them in the past, and quite a bit earlier than what we’ve expected.”
Professor Summerell said while it was “not unusual” to see blooms in late-August, there are “a lot more flowering now” than the gardens have seen in previous years.
“In the past it’s been a bit cooler for longer, but this year we’ve had quite warm, and spectacular sunny days through winter,” he said.
The conditions – drier, warmer, and sunnier winter days – have helped dry the soil ahead of spring and stimulate early flowering.
“It’s all an indication of the way the climate is warming,” Professor Summerell said.
“And while it’s not definitive, as we start to see more of this type of weather, we’ll see the phenology (the life cycle) of plants change so that they are better able to change.”
It is not only flowers that are blooming. Fruits and vegetables are ripe for the picking ahead of schedule, too.
Brisbane-based conservationist Jerry Coleby-Williams has been sharing pictures of his bustling garden and early-sprouting produce since the end of July, commenting regularly on the “little spring in the Brisbane winter”.
He has declared it the “best ever” winter for a number of spring plants: including his tomato crops, jackfruit, citrus plants, and ripe bananas. He also said his eggplant crop is the best he has seen in almost 20 years of gardening in the Sunshine State.
He said “things are happening fast this year” in his garden, with some plants flowering “before the last fruit have been picked” – which is all courtesy of “an incredibly warm subtropical winter”.
“When people say to me ‘this is the new spring’ they are completely wrong: this is the greying of seasonality,” Mr Coleby-Williams, who is also the director of the Seed Savers Network, wrote in one post.
He said a changing climatewas making information that keen green thumbs had abided by for years, like flowering times of displays, “increasingly redundant”.
But even if the sight of gardens in spring bloom before winter ends are a welcome sight to some, scientists warn the bright displays point to the threat climate change poses to our ecosystems.
Ecologists have warned extreme temperature fluctuations can cause natural events like floral blooms to happen before they should, which can disrupt the complex relationship between plants and animals that keep Australia’s unique ecosystems alive.
For tens of thousands of years, the system has been synchronised. But the changing climate, signalled by these early blooms, may throw this rhythm off.
Some plants, Professor Summerell said, will adapt while others that are more dependent on regular external conditions will be “pushed out of their ecological niche”.
And even as some of our plants adapt to temperature cues, pollinators – like honeybees and blowflies – do not respond in the same way.
“So many of our plant species are dependent on specific pollinators to exchange information,” Professor Summerell said.
“But if those pollinators are not present because of environmental changes or just not able to adapt to environmental change, it becomes very, very difficult for species to get pollinated and reproduce.
“All of these systems are so interconnected and so dependent and very susceptible to changes that disrupt ecology, even in a botanic garden.”
Are you seeing early blooms in your garden? Continue the conversation – georgina.noack@news.com.au