Phenology is the study of recurring seasonal events, such as flowering and leaf fall in plants and hibernation and migration in animals. Parameters such as the date and duration of flowering can be compared with climatic parameters such as temperature, rainfall and humidity to see if there is any correlation.
Phenological research at RBGE dates back to the 1850s, when the Curator, James McNab first recorded the flowering dates of more than 60 species - see J. McNab (1857) Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh 5: 173, 184.
The current phenology programme at RBGE has been running since 2002 and involves recording the frequency and duration of flowering and stages with each flowering season and changes in foliage for over a hundred species. These data will increase the understanding of the mechanism in plants which responds to climate changes and will enable scientists to predict how plants will respond to climate change. This has important consequences for conservation, agriculture, horticulture and forestry; what gardeners are able to grow in the future will, without doubt, be influenced by climate change.
Over the past five years early spring has been getting warmer and some spring-flowering plants flower more than two weeks earlier. It is a unique experimental opportunity comprising plants from regions across the world, growing at a single site, and subject to the same approximate climatic variation.
The phenology programme based at RBGE is in collaboration between staff and research associates in the Science and Horticulture Divisions and volunteers. The programme includes a daily monitoring project, a weekly monitoring project and the special examination of Rhododendron species. These studies include the development of semi-quantitative rapid-survey methods for monitoring phenological characters.
The Scottish Forestry Phenology Project aims to establish a network of sites based on RBGE's climatically contrasting Scottish gardens (at Edinburgh, Dawyck, Logan and Benmore). The details of the project remain to be resolved, though it is envisaged that it would be undertaken in collaboration with key stakeholders in Scottish forestry and would provide information relevant to the forest industry (i.e. phenology of material of known genetic stock under different climatic conditions).
The International Phenology Gardens Project is coordinated by Humboldt University (Berlin), with sites throughout continental Europe. The project monitors the phenology of cloned material for a range of tree species. RBGE is currently establishing a site at its garden at Dawyck which, for Scotland, has an unusual cool continental climate and will provide important new data for the project.
