AI Reveals Plants' Flowering Times Altered by Climate Crisis

Artificial intelligence has uncovered that plants globally are changing their flowering times because of the escalating climate crisis, according to a new report. A global study utilized AI to examine eight million digitized plant specimens collected over a century, finding that flowering has shifted by an average of 2.5 days earlier or later each decade. This disruption poses a significant threat to the essential relationships between plants and their pollinators.

This groundbreaking research is an example of how converting preserved plant and fungi specimens into digital records is revolutionizing conservation efforts. New technologies are being applied to vast collections to accelerate the search for climate-resilient wild relatives of food plants and to discover new medicines from preserved fungi.