Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/22/extreme-weather-has-caused-jap.html
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Where I live the leaves should have been well on their way to turning but, they’re still green.
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Here where I am in California, the apples have started blossoming, the blackberries have started to produce fruit again… all the plants are confused. Some of this happened last winter, but not to this degree. I suspect this is going to be a regular fall/winter occurrence in the future.
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Who would have pegged ‘Cherry Blossoms in the fall’ as one of the signs of end times?
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Sometimes it’s temperature, but I think plants usually respond to the length of daylight, which would require more than mere climate change to mess up.
In 2012 a unusually warm March caused Wisconsin’s cherry crop to blossom just in time to be killed by frost in April. (https://www.businessinsider.com/97-percent-of-michigans-tart-cherries-were-destroyed-by-freak-weather-2012-7)
This is where climate change gets weird, it’s warm enough to bloom early, but not live through the season. Nature won’t adapt quickly to these new stimuli and I expect we will see more and more issues where nature is no longer designed for the current climate and has catastrophic failures.
The only plus side from that year was New Glarus invented a new beer - Serendipity (https://newglarusbrewing.com/beers/ourbeers/beer/serendipity).
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That’s been debunked, and it’s just temperature.
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The sad thing is that the weird bloom period wasn’t a surprise. When i was in Japan in June a friend i was staying with mentioned that they were expecting the cherry blossoms within the next few months because of the weather. Also while i was there the flowering/blooming season for other plants had also come much earlier than expected due to weather as well, which worked great for us because we got to enjoy our hikes without the usual crowd that apparently shows up during the official flowering season
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Observant people would call this a sign but I don’t believe that most people are observant.
For instance, as far as I know, no one has realized the sign that was the collapse of the Old Man of the Mountains in NH in 2003 perhaps because no one remembers the Nathaniel Hawthorne story and the legend of the Great Stone Face any more.
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However, some of us are from New England!
Kind of like all the pretty flowers arranged on the casket.
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It’s a hormonal thing too.
The presence of leaves on trees suppress flowering.
Hiroyuki Wada, an arborist with the Flower Association of Japan who was interviewed by Weathernews, said cherry blossom buds are created during summer, but they usually don’t bloom until after the leaves fall because abscisic acid — a type of plant hormone that slows plant growth in preparation for the winter — is sent from the leaves to the buds to prevent them from blooming. However, Typhoon Jebi and Typhoon Trami, which landed on Japan in September, carried powerful winds and salty seawater that forced the trees to shed leaves. Warm air also came in from the south, possibly leading the flowers to blossom, he said.
I have never seen or heard any reference to the legend and the actual destruction of the Old Man as a comment on American politics since the rocks crumbled in 2003 until today. Have you?
Maybe I am remembering this book! heheh: https://sleepingbearpress.com/shop/show/11335
I definitely remember thinking when it fell apart, “this is an ominous sign.”
I remember thinking the same thing, especially since I was driving in and out of NH during that weekend but I’ve never read or heard a talking head ever mention it. It seems to me to be an obvious hook for a column or think piece but it seems to have disappeared down the memory hole.
Another long-standing piece of common wisdom when I was growing up was that a mayor of New York City never succeeded in being elected to a higher office. To my recollection, it was never mentioned when Rudy 911 was running for President.
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It’s been so warm in the UK that my folks’ fig tree (which has only been fruiting for the last ten years or so, figs aren’t a typical English tree), is trying to get a second crop in. I think it’ll lose them all to a frost in the next week, but one and half crops from a fig tree in the UK is definitely not normal.
Just very shortly interjected: some do, others have other internal or external triggers, or combinations of both.
It’s biology. Anything goes. 
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Trying for two crops is perfectly normal for figs in most parts of the UK (maybe not the frozen north beyond the Watford Gap but, you know, the civilised parts /s).
It’ll be concerning if we get to a point where they manage it.
Have you ever found anything useful to do with the baby figs?
The only thing I found was this
http://mamastaverna.com/baby-fig-spoon-sweet-sikalaki-gliko/
which is a complete pig to make. Once and never again.
This note is not to be taken lightly:
Warning! The pot and colander you use will end up with sticky little smears of latex all over them. I had to scrub it off with scouring powder. I tend to think the latex would even defeat nonstick cookware and would be very difficult to remove without abrasives, so I suggest sticking with cookware that you can give a good scrubbing to.
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