How do evergreens stay green all winter?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2023

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lots of trees shed their leaves to prepare for chilly winter temperatures – but not all of them. Evergreen trees, like pines and spruces, keep their needles throughout the winter. So how do they do it? We asked science communicator and plant expert Brandi Cannon-Force to help us find the answer.

Have a question that’s really needling you? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll help find a tree-mendous answer!

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the brains behind brains on, this is the moment of um.
0:03.0	Answering those questions that make you go. Um, um, um, um. Moment of on comes to you from, um,
0:14.0	um, um, um,
0:15.0	moment of on, um, um,
0:20.0	Moment of on comes to you from APM studios. I'm Quillium, the Porcupine.
0:26.4	You can call me Quill for short, everybody does. I live way up north on Alaska's Knai Peninsula.
0:34.8	It gets pretty chilly up here in the winter,
0:36.7	but unlike bears and some other mammals, I don't hibernate.
0:39.6	I just slow my roll, relax, keep calm, and wattle on.
0:43.8	Moving slowly helps me save energy when it gets chilly.
0:46.7	Oh, and my other secret for surviving the winter,
0:49.4	I sing a lot of show tunes, like a lot.
0:53.0	Prickly, hell alone in the moonlight.
0:58.0	I could have waddled all night.
1:01.0	I could have waddled all night. Or you know, my name is Alexander Porcupine. Just you hate! I just have to go find a tree to go climb up and so I can really project my singing voice. Oh what about this one?
1:14.8	A gorgeous black spruce.
1:16.8	Look at all these beautiful branches and the evergreen needles.
1:23.1	Huh. You know, I've always wondered about how these trees stay green all year round.
1:27.9	Hi, I'm Elliot from Whitmore Lake Michigan and I want to know how do evergreen stay green in the winter.
1:34.6	Trees look evergreen because what they do is they lose their leaves constantly
1:42.2	over time rather than just losing them all at once like deciduous trees.
1:47.0	My name is Brandy Cannon Forest and I am a botanist.
	...

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