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Plants
Special Issues
Relationships Between Plant Phenology and Climate Factors
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Relationships Between Plant Phenology and Climate Factors

A Special Issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747) belonging to the section "Plant Response to Abiotic Stress and Climate Change".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 3207

Editor

Prof. Dr. Yanjun Du

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Tropical Agriculture and Forestry, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China
Interests: forest phenology; biogeography; community ecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Plant phenology refers to the periodic changes in plants during their growth and reproduction stages, serving as a sensitive indicator of how climate change affects ecosystems. Global changes have led to shifts in plant phenology, and these phenological changes affect population survival, species distribution, and species coexistence, as well as key ecosystem processes such as carbon cycling and water balance. Additionally, they can alter interactions between different trophic levels. Therefore, phenological research has become an essential approach for investigating the impacts of global change on ecosystems.

Previous studies suggest that the climatic factors affecting plant phenology mainly include temperature (winter chilling and spring temperature), precipitation, photoperiod, and irradiance. However, there are some limitations to many of these phenological studies. On the one hand, many of these climate factors are known to interact, i.e., chilling and photoperiod can, together, determine spring phenology through their complex impacts on dormancy release. Additionally, insufficient chilling may be offset by additional forcing. However, although such complexities have been identified in some species, they remain poorly understood for most species, including dominant species and rare species. On the other hand, most current phenological studies focus on temperate species and on spring phenology (such as leaf-out and flowering); research on tropical and subtropical species and on autumn phenology are very limited. In addition, the ability to explain and predict phenology across space, time, and taxa has largely relied on annual average and seasonal climatic variables, ignoring the potential role of extreme weather events in regulating phenology; furthermore,  extreme weather events may be key drivers of multitrophic phenological mismatches. 

This Special Issue of Plants aims to address outstanding research questions and challenges in the relationships between plants’ phenology and climate factors. Reviews, perspectives, and original research contributions are all welcome. Studies focusing on phenological change in response to multiple abiotic drivers, or under extreme climate change, are particularly encouraged. You can use data from field observations, experiments, herbarium specimen, local flora, etc.

Prof. Dr. Yanjun Du
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • plant phenology
  • climate change
  • mechanistic understanding
  • ecological modeling
  • plant species
  • experiment

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 1817 KB  
Article
Onset and Seasonal Kinetics of Xylogenesis in Pinus sylvestris L. on the Southern Fringes of Its Distribution Depend on Early Spring Air and Soil Temperature
by Liliana V. Belokopytova, Natalia V. Karmanovskaya, Dina F. Zhirnova, David M. Meko, Yulia A. Kholdaenko, Elena A. Babushkina and Eugene A. Vaganov
Plants 2026, 15(13), 1933; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants15131933 - 23 Jun 2026
Viewed by 401
Abstract
Climatic variation is inherently linked with tree phenology; however, phenological triggers depend on species and habitat. We analyzed key climatic factors for the onset of secondary growth for Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) at the southern limit of its distribution in Siberia. [...] Read more.
Climatic variation is inherently linked with tree phenology; however, phenological triggers depend on species and habitat. We analyzed key climatic factors for the onset of secondary growth for Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) at the southern limit of its distribution in Siberia. From direct observations of developing tree rings, seasonal curves of the number of cells in the cambial zone, in the cell-expansion zone, and the total number of xylem tracheids were developed over seven years with a wide variety in the phenological dates. We found that later and shorter intervals of these stages of xylogenesis were compensated by higher maximums of kinetics curves, probably due to higher temperatures and daylengths during the respective phenophases. Air temperature and soil temperature at a depth of 20 cm converged to values (mean ± SE) 6.6 ± 0.9 °C (air) and 3.7 ± 0.4 °C (soil) for a 15-day interval prior to cambial activity onset. Date of Tsoil ≥ 3.5 °C was most closely related to cambial activity onset (r = 0.99) and preceded it by 9.6 ± 1.1 days. Cumulative temperature sums were less reliable. Apparently, both air and soil temperature thresholds have to be reached for cambial division to start in this species-habitat combination. Late abundant snowfall can yield divergence between air and soil temperatures and delay the onset of xylogenesis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Relationships Between Plant Phenology and Climate Factors)
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18 pages, 3099 KB  
Article
Direct Observation of the Developing Intra-Annual Density Fluctuation (IADF) for Scots Pine in Semiarid Siberian Belt Forest: External Stress Targets Cambium
by Yulia A. Kholdaenko, Natalia V. Karmanovskaya, Liliana V. Belokopytova, Dina F. Zhirnova, Nariman B. Mapitov, Eugene A. Vaganov and Elena A. Babushkina
Plants 2026, 15(3), 348; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants15030348 - 23 Jan 2026
Viewed by 800
Abstract
Long-term observations of the seasonal growth of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) tree rings in the arid conditions of the Khakass-Minusinsk Basin (southern Siberia) revealed that in 2024, trees had formed a tree ring with a typical intra-annual density fluctuation (IADF) in [...] Read more.
Long-term observations of the seasonal growth of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) tree rings in the arid conditions of the Khakass-Minusinsk Basin (southern Siberia) revealed that in 2024, trees had formed a tree ring with a typical intra-annual density fluctuation (IADF) in the transition wood. An analysis of the timing and causes of this wood structure anomaly was conducted using a combination of three approaches: (1) analyzing images of cross-sections of the forming tree ring throughout the season; (2) comparing the timing of anomalous cells’ differentiation with daily climate data; (3) comparing seasonal growth observations with calculated characteristics of the modeled growth rate and its derivatives: soil moisture and transpiration. We found that during the most severe heat wave and drought (from 22 June to 9 July), the last normal earlywood cells were yet expanding, IADF cells were being produced in the cambial zone, and the first of them began expansion, while normal cells began being produced again immediately after the subsiding of environmental stress. Apparently, low soil moisture and very high temperatures mainly impacted cells in the cambial zone, marking it as the primary target of external factors influencing tree-ring formation and structure, which is important for dendroclimatology and digital wood anatomy. This result is supported by both indirect and limited direct evidence from other sources. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Relationships Between Plant Phenology and Climate Factors)
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17 pages, 1815 KB  
Article
The Mid-Domain Effect Shapes a Unimodal Latitudinal Pattern in Fruiting Phenology
by Longyang Zhang, Qianhuai Xue and Yanjun Du
Plants 2025, 14(23), 3701; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants14233701 - 4 Dec 2025
Viewed by 1305
Abstract
The mid-domain effect (MDE) has been used to explain spatial diversity patterns and flowering phenology, but its role in fruiting phenology has received limited attention to date. This study investigates whether the MDE shapes fruiting phenology and whether its influence varies with latitude. [...] Read more.
The mid-domain effect (MDE) has been used to explain spatial diversity patterns and flowering phenology, but its role in fruiting phenology has received limited attention to date. This study investigates whether the MDE shapes fruiting phenology and whether its influence varies with latitude. We integrated fruiting phenology data for 12,179 plant species across 28 Chinese provinces and used a null model to simulate expected fruiting richness patterns. Our results suggest that the MDE plays a significant role in explaining fruiting phenology patterns in most provinces. Crucially, the variance explained by the MDE exhibited a significant unimodal relationship with latitude across all groups, peaking at mid-latitudes (39.6° N for all species, 37.1° N for herbaceous plants, and 36.8° N for woody plants). Unlike flowering phenology—which tends to show a simple linear increase in MDE strength with latitude—fruiting exhibited a distinct peak, highlighting different ecological pressures acting on these two reproductive stages. The MDE was the primary contributor explaining fruiting richness, providing a markedly stronger fit to the data than key climate variables like temperature and precipitation, although woody plants showed a stronger secondary response to precipitation. These findings demonstrate that geometric constraints are a key driver of fruiting phenology, deepening our understanding of temporal niches and the ecological processes shaping plant reproductive phenology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Relationships Between Plant Phenology and Climate Factors)
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