Trees' Leaves Grow At a Cool 70° All Over the World

biogeochick writes "Ever turn on the air conditioner on a hot day? How about a heater when it gets cold? OK, so we all know that humans act to keep themselves cool, but what about trees? A recent article on tree core isotopic evidence has shown that trees from tropical to boreal forests all grow at 70 degrees. The study, published in Nature by some fantastic researchers (so one of them is my adviser, so sue me) and covered by NPR on All Things Considered, has shed some light on the convergent temperature at which trees perform photosynthesis." Update: 06/19 21:31 GMT by T : I give, I give -- that's 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

Get a real unit.

[by Anonymous Coward]

That's insane, that's so hot we'd burn our fingers if we touched the trees?!

Re:Get a real unit.

[dougmc (70836)]

No, 70 degrees is too cold!

Hell, there have been some superconductors found that work at 70 degrees!
Perhaps rather than `get a real unit', just give a unit, real or not.

Re:Get a real unit.

[ConceptJunkie (24823)]

No, 70 degrees is about four-fifths of a right angle.

I just hope someone doesn't come around and rotate my trees, because they might die!

Re:Get a real unit.

[dougmc (70836)]

touche!

And in a similar vein, I thought I was only six degrees away from Kevin Bacon? Or was that Paris Hilton? Either way, *70* degrees seems very excessive!

It took me 10 years of school to get two degrees ... 70 would take ... a long time.

Re:Diploma mills

[saskboy (600063)]

Don't use that M-word around trees. They'll get very nervous hearing that!

Re:Get a real unit.

[PaganRitual (551879)]

Never mind rotation, a tree at 70 degrees is in great danger of falling over.

Not that anyone would hear it, mind you.

Re:Get a real unit.

[Profane MuthaFucka (574406)]

70 degrees? That's a smart fucking tree.

Re:Get a real unit.

[PaganRitual (551879)]

Trees do have quite a long lifespan you know, much longer than humans.

A tree in general has more than enough time time in its life to :

- heat up to 70C and burn all its leaves off,

- cool down to 70F and grow them all back again,

- complete 70 various degrees ranging from "Bachelor of the justification of stealing someone elses wifi" all the way to "Masters in the creation of piss-poor wifi analogies", during which time it likely met a lot of /.ers

- run out of lame 70 degrees jokes to make because after the three obvious ones everyone starting converting 70 to every other fucking useless unit under the sun

shortly before one distasterous day, leaning over to a 70 degree angle to shit in the woods before accidentally but silently falling down to it's death, at which point you can count the rings to show that oh wow I can't believe you read this far I am so fucking bored.

Re:Get a real unit.

[by Anonymous Coward]

I think it's quite clear what degrees was referring to...the only problem was they didn't indicate whether it was North, South, East or West, so you can't tell whether they're talking about latitude or longitude. Either way, I think they're saying they've located the last grouping of trees left on the planet.

With exciting news like this, we may yet slow the pace of global climate change!

Re:Get a real unit.

[Microsift (223381)]

If I recall my chemistry correctly, I think you mean 70 Kelvin, the Kelvin scale does not use degrees.

Shameless karma whore

[LighterShadeOfBlack (1011407)]

That's 21C for anyone living in the 21st century.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Actually, I do RTFA (1058596)]

That's 21C for anyone living in the 21st century.

That's 294.15K for anyone who has (somewhat at least) overcome an infantile obsession with water.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Atzanteol (99067)]

And 529.67 rankine for those of us who are simply better looking.

But seriously, when did Fahrenheit stop working?

Re:Shameless karma whore

[johannesg (664142)]

But seriously, when did Fahrenheit stop working?

He passed away in 1736. It is likely that he stopped working some time before that point, although we cannot be sure that he didn't die at his desk.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Simon Brooke (45012)]

And 529.67 rankine for those of us who are simply better looking.

But seriously, when did Fahrenheit stop working?

About the same time that furlongs per fortnight ceased to be a useful measure of speed.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Xaroth (67516)]

My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!

Re:Shameless karma whore

[flyingfsck (986395)]

You know, even a ship does better than that I think, that is about 10 feet per gallon.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[rocketPack (1255456)]

The parent is not kidding:
40 rods = 0.125miles
1 hogshead = 63 U.S. Gallons
So... ((0.125miles)*5280ft/mi)/63 gallons=10.476 feet per gallon

GP must drive a Hummer... perhaps only in reverse, like Mother Goose.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[sYkSh0n3 (722238)]

ha, even my truck gets 400,000 rods to the hogshead.

Actually that's the unit used car dealers should use.

"Oh you definitely want this new hummer, it gets 262,080 rods per hogshead."

ok, now i'm going home, i just wasted 5 minutes converting mpg's to rph's for no reason what-so-ever.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Simon Brooke (45012)]

The third largest nation in the world (by population) still uses Fahrenheit. I wouldn't consider that quite in the same league.

Which is another way of saying 'less than 5% of the population of the world still uses Fahrenheit'. Looked at that way I'd assert it's in exactly the same league, or, indeed, the same 5.560 kilometres.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Simon Brooke (45012)]

And that's why an American paper should be using the metric system? Because the 95% of the world that's not in America is too stupid to realize that it's an American publication writing to an American audience using the units of measure in use in America?

Errrrr... hate to tell you this, but the journal in question is Nature. Published by Macmillan Publishers Ltd, a British company owned by a German group, for an international audience.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[pjt33 (739471)]

Major scientific journals are not written for "an American audience" but for an international audience. But this is a total red herring anyway, because if you RTFA you'll find that it uses centigrade.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Koiu Lpoi (632570)]

Latest System? Are you daft? Celsius has been the standard for science and, well, everywhere except the US, for a long time. Just because the US has been staunchly ignoring the rest of the world's units and measures doesn't mean that it's this newfangled temperature scale only commies and Jews use.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[zeromorph (1009305)]

...Celsius has been the standard for science and, well, everywhere except the US, for a long time...

You forgot ... Belize [hydromet.gov.bz]!

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286)]

Celsius used in science. News at 11. Also, a special report on the water falling problem: Is the sky leaking or is God crying?

Re:Shameless karma whore

[RoverDaddy (869116)]

Considering how much of my body happens to be water, I don't consider it an infantile obsession. Some people have an infantile obsession with making water, but that's something different.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Bandman (86149)]

And in somewhat less than 10 comments, this has become a pee thread.

Nice job. /sigh

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Al Al Cool J (234559)]

And it's 1.22 radians, for anyone who thought "a cool 70 degrees" meant a rakish angle.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[halivar (535827)]

Celsius is based on water temperature, and Fahrenheit is based on alcohol temperature. Ergo, Fahrenheit is WAY better than Celsius. QED.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[evdubs (708273)]

Uhh.. no it isn't. According to wikipedia [wikipedia.org], there are three "standard" temperatures you can use to calibrate your thermometer for a Fahrenheit scale.

1) 0F - the stable temperature of ice, water, and NH_4Cl
2) 32F - where water freezes
3) 96F - average body temperature

Alcohol is not used anywhere.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[mordenkhai (1167617)]

I believe he is referring to the fact that alcohol was used, in large quantities, by the researchers while coming up with the system. In that regard it is heavily based on alcohol, and Cheetos too if memory serves, but there is again no Wiki reference.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Daimanta (1140543)]

"3) 96F - average body temperature"

That's nuts! An AVERAGE temperature to calibrate a thermometer? That's the same thing as calibrating my speedometer in my car to the average speed of a laden swallow.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[4D6963 (933028)]

"3) 96F - average body temperature"

That's nuts! An AVERAGE temperature to calibrate a thermometer? That's the same thing as calibrating my speedometer in my car to the average speed of a laden swallow.

Reminds me that when the metre was created it was so that the Earth's circumference would be 40,000,000 metres. And since then we measure the Earth's circumference in metres (well, kilometres), and it's not 40,000,000. Go figure..

Re:Shameless karma whore

[jc42 (318812)]

Since when was normal body temp 96F? Google-sama tell me it's 98.6F.

Except that that .6 is bogus precision. The "normal" core temperature of a healthy human body varies by a degree or two over the course of a day without any harm. Attempts to calculate an average temperature of a crowd of humans will turn out different in the third decimal place depending on which humans and which measuring tools you use.

The conventional 98.6F temperature comes from converting 37C to Fahrenheit. The 37C temperature is also "plus or minus a degree or so", but it doesn't have fake precision from a third digit.

98F and 99F are completely normal temperatures for a human body, and are no cause for medical alarm. The .6 is a meaningless artifact of conversion from Celsius.

96F would produce a mildly worried look on your doctor's face, though it wouldn't result in a panic.

Similarly, I once registered 101 point something on a doctor's thermometer, and he just asked me what I'd been doing in the previous hour. I told him that I'd been playing tennis and had a hot shower. He just nodded, and went on to other things, since I'd explained the slightly elevated temperature. He did take my temperature again 10 or 15 minutes later, and when it was lower, he ignored it.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[LighterShadeOfBlack (1011407)]

It's got nothing to do with getting upset. It's about sheer convenience. In large swathes of the World the metric system has been the only system taught for decades and this is an internationally read website which has (I suspect) a demographic bias towards younger people. Providing temperatures in a system that large portions of its readers may not know off the top of their head seems silly and unncessary when all that was needed was a "70F (21C)" to save potentially some x thousand readers have to go Google it or, God forbid, read the article.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[meowsqueak (599208)]

No, you missed the point - Fahrenheit, Celsius, Kelvin, it doesn't matter. What matters is that the unit is *specified* correctly. A 'degree' unit is a 360th of a single complete angular rotation. Obviously a 'degree C' or 'degree F' is completely different.

There's nothing wrong with specifying a non-standard unit, as long as it's specified accurately. Doing conversions is all part of the fun.

Re:Shameless karma whore

[Smidge204 (605297)]

The worst part is the article says "21 C" - meaning the guy who submitted this had to do extra work to make it that way.

=Smidge=

Or in Celsius

[ObsessiveMathsFreak (773371)]

That's about 21.11 degrees Celsius.

Americans really need to start using the metric system. Honestly, it really is worth the effort to switch.

Re:Or in Celsius

[Pennidren (1211474)]

The rest of the world really needs to start using only English. Honestly, it really is worth the effort to switch.

Re:Or in Celsius

[Andrew_T366 (759304)]

I'm generally in favor of metrication and the use of metric units, but the issue of temperature is a key exception. The Fahrenheit scale is more precise, and its zero-to-100 degree range more realistically covers the spectrum of what one would typically see on a weather report.

I sometimes wonder why Celsius is considered a metric measure to begin with: It predates the advent of the modern metric system itself. Its zero-degree reference point is just as arbitrary as Fahrenheit's in the big scheme of things. And, the measure doesn't employ metric prefixes (although I suppose they could conceivably be appropriated for the purpose).

Re:Or in Celsius

[Applekid (993327)]

I never did get the obsession other people have with the units we use in the states.

It's merely a point of contention for the "we're right, you're wrong" nationalistic crowd. Same with dates: MM/DD/YYYY, DD-MM-YYYY, YYYY.MM.DD, so on and so on.

I'm sure a war or two has been fought over whether toilet paper should be hung in the proper overhand fashion or the grotesque underhand abomination.

Re:Or in Celsius

[Hatta (162192)]

YYYY-MM-DD(ISO 8601) is the only correct format. When you specify dates in that format, you can sort things chronologically simply by sorting them alphanumerically.

Re:Or in Celsius

[Strange Ranger (454494)]

Hanging toilet paper over the top has no benefit except to make the foldy triangle look nice in hotel rooms.
It's actually a pain because when you go to tear some off with one hand you have to be quick and nimble to keep the paper from spooling out all over the place.

Hanging it under is far more practical. You can tear if it off with one hand very easily without having the paper unspool 7 yards of itself onto the floor.

Hang it under.

Re:Or in Celsius

[vajaradakini (1209944)]

Yes, clearly everything runs smoothly when people work in different units. Nothing could ever go wrong. Nobody could spend millions on a probe only to smash it into a planet instead, right? [wikipedia.org]

Sometimes it's worth an inconvenience...

Re:Or in Celsius

[NotBornYesterday (1093817)]

We buy our milk in gallon jugs, but our soda in 2-liter bottles. However, if you buy soda in quantities less than 1 liter, the measurements switch over to ounces. Every ruler/tape measure/etc. I have had for the past 30 years has been dual-marked with inches and centimeters. Our toilets and urinals are marked "1 gallon / 3.8 liters per flush", and our speedometers are marked in both mph and kph. Engine displacement on new vehicles is noted in liters, while engine displacement on older muscle cars is still noted in cubic inches (as it should be). I have a socket wrench set that includes english and metric sockets.

So, we've been doing pretty well working with both at the same time for years. You mean to say the rest of the world can't keep up? ;)

pretty thin science...

[MollyB (162595)]

The first link is to a subscription-only site.
The second contains "warm" and fuzzy quotes like the following:
"Trees in chilly climates also have ways to make their leaves or needles retain more heat from the sun. Pine needles, for example, clump together. Think of gloves and mittens, Helliker says. If you're wearing gloves, wind can easily whip heat away from your individual fingers, leaving you cold. But if your fingers are all together in a mitten, they're going to be warmer.

Richter says the discovery isn't just fascinating science. It gives her a special kinship with trees.

On a recent day in Philadelphia when the mercury was near 100 degrees, she said, "I was staring at a hickory tree and its leaves were down â" they had wilted," she says. "And I was thinking, hey, it's hot, I'm hot. They enjoy 70 degrees, and I enjoy 70 degrees, too.""

A special kinship with trees?!? How did this make it to Nature?

And I grow...

[sidnelson13 (1309391)]

... when placed into moist locations. Give me five!

Ok, no good comes from watching Scrubs.

Humans are 98Â but prefer 72Â

[booch (4157)]

I've often wondered why it is that humans prefer air temperatures somewhere around 72Â. It'd seem more reasonable for us to prefer something closer to 98Â. I suppose the temperature differential between the 2 is what's required to keep us at a steady state, dissipating the energy we burn.

I find it even more remarkable that trees prefer nearly the same temperature that humans do.

Re:Why are plants green?

[solanum (80810)]

Mod parent down. This is absolute rubbish, how did it get to +5 informative? I assume it's there as a joke so it should only be +5 funny, or possibly now, +5 fooled Slashdot. I am a plant physiologist, there are three basic types of chlorophyll in land plants, a,b & c. They have slightly different spectra, but they are not blue and yellow, they all have minimal absorbance in the green part of the spectrum and thus look green. The yellows and reds in senescing leaves are from carotenoids and anthocyanins.

Re:Why are plants green?

[postglock (917809)]

The green colour of chlorophyll relates to the historical precursors to the first photosynthetic organisms. Originally (a few billion years ago), early bacteria were non-photosynthetic, fermenting carbon anaerobically. This rapidly depleted the primordial "soup." The first organisms to utilise light (something akin to Halobacterium halobium) used a pigment called bacteriorhodopsin to help its metabolism. Bacteriorhodopsin absorbs a central band of visible light.

The evolution of chlorophyll followed (perhaps in Cyanobacteria) in organisms at the bottom of the sea. These were the first organisms to fix carbon dioxide. Being at the bottom of the ocean, only the far bands of visible light were available to them (blue and red), and hence green chlorophyll evolved.

Since then, accessory pigments have also evolved (e.g. phycobiliproteins), which have reclaimed other parts of the visible spectrum, and changed the colour of the plants or algae.