Cool Plants for Cold Climates: A Garden Designer’s Perspective

“icehouse” (cold) Climates

“icehouse” (cold) Climates

Earth's climate has changed, within life-sustaining bounds, from warm to cool intervals, on scales from thousands to hundreds of millions of years. In the Phanerozoic Eon there have been three intervals of glaciation (Ordovician, Carboniferous and Cenozoic) lasting tens of millions of years, with ice down to sea level at mid-latitudes (Frakes et al., 1992; Crowell, 1999). These cool " ice-house...

“icehouse” (cold) Climates

Plant adaptation to cold climates

In this short review, I will first summarize criteria by which environments can be considered "cold", with plant stature (size, height above ground) playing a central role for the climate actually experienced. Plants adapted to such environments have to cope with both extremes and with gradual influences of low temperature. The first requires freezing resistance, which is tightly coupled to dev...

Sub-zero cold tolerance of Spartina pectinata (prairie cordgrass) and Miscanthus × giganteus: candidate bioenergy crops for cool temperate climates

Miscanthus × giganteus grown in cool temperate regions of North America and Europe can exhibit severe mortality in the year after planting, and poor frost tolerance of leaves. Spartina pectinata (prairie cordgrass), a productive C4 perennial grass native to North America, has been suggested as an alternative biofuel feedstock for colder regions; however, its cold tolerance relative to M. × giga...