New Zealand Journal of Botany abstracts
Godley Review
A touch of frost? Cold hardiness of plants in the
Southern
Hemisphere
Peter Bannister
Department of Botany
University
of Otago
PO Box 56
Dunedin
9054, New Zealand
peter.bannister@botany.otago.ac.nz
Abstract This review contrasts
the frost
resistance of
plants from the Southern Hemisphere with that of the Northern
Hemisphere and is
principally concerned with plants from New
Zealand, Australia,
and South America. It gives a brief overview of
methods
for determining frost resistance in the field and in controlled
environments
with intact or excised plant parts. It considers various methods of
determining
frost resistance and the expression of critical temperatures causing
damage,
and discusses the problems of using excised plant parts and freezing of
tissues. This review, however, is not principally concerned with
physiological
aspects of frost resistance, but more with biogeographic aspects of the
environment and quantification of the relationships between frost
resistance
and temperature related factors such as altitude and latitude. It gives
examples of differences in frost resistance between the two hemispheres
and
attributes these to the contrast between the climates of largely
continental
land masses in the Northern Hemisphere and the oceanic environment of
the
Southern Hemisphere. Furthermore, it also shows similarities between
the frost
resistance of plants from the Southern Hemisphere during the growing
season and
the maximum frost resistance of tropical alpine species and further
similarities between species on oceanic islands in both hemispheres.
Comprehensive lists of species’ frost resistance are included in tables
and
appendices.
Keywords frost resistance; New
Zealand;
Australia;
South America; South Africa; latitude; altitude; temperature; trees;
conifers;
shrubs; cushion plants; herbs; cacti; palms; ferns; hardening;
de-hardening;
climate change
New Zealand
Journal of Botany, 2007, Vol. 45: 1–33
0028–825X/07/4501–0001 © The Royal Society
of New Zealand
2007
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