High risk, high gain? Trade-offs between growth and resistance to extremes in red oak

For selecting suitable planting material in times of rapid climate change, information on the resistance and adaptive potential of tree species and provenances is needed. In a study led by Ph.D. student Jonathan Kormann, which was recently published in Frontiers in Plant Science, growth responses of 12 red oak provenances to climatic fluctuations and extremes were therefore studied at three sites with distinct environmental conditions in Germany. Both a high variation in growth performance and climate sensitivity between sites was observed as well as a high intra-specific variation. Surprisingly, no trade-offs between growth performance and resistance to extreme events were found, neither for late frost nor for extreme droughts.