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🗓️ 6 February 2024
⏱️ 4 minutes
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In the winter, most of us are used to seeing bare tree branches – but some trees, like firs, pines, and spruces, don’t usually lose their needles when it gets cold. We asked forest ecologist Diana Macias to help us understand why.
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0:00.0 | From the brains behind brains on, this is the moment of um. |
0:03.2 | Answering those questions that make you go. |
0:07.8 | Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, um. |
0:10.0 | Um, um, um, um, um. The moment of um comes to you from 8 p.m. studios. I'm Molly Bloom |
0:25.8 | Autumn is one of my favorite times of year pumpkin spice lattes, cozy sweaters |
0:32.3 | and crunching through the fallen leaves in the yard. |
0:35.9 | After all the green trees turn brilliant chains of orange, yellow, and red, they gently |
0:39.6 | waft to the ground where they can be scooped into giant piles just perfect for jumping in. |
0:45.0 | But you know who doesn't get in on the leaf party? Evergreen trees. |
0:48.6 | Those include pines, furs, and spruces, and they have needles instead of leaves. |
0:53.1 | One of our listeners wanted to know what happens to them. |
0:56.2 | My name is Ava from Michigan. |
0:59.4 | My question is, why do pine trees not lose their needles in the winter like how other trees lose their leaves? |
1:10.0 | So leaves are |
1:16.0 | so leaves are very expensive to make. My name is Diana Masias. |
1:18.0 | I am a PhD student at the University of New Mexico. |
1:22.0 | I am a forest ecologist. at the University of New Mexico. |
1:22.6 | I am a forest psychologist that studies how different populations of trees respond to drought. |
1:30.2 | There are a lot of different strategies that different plants have evolved to deal with these costs and so some trees like deciduous trees make new leaves every year |
1:41.0 | whereas some trees like evergreen trees invest a lot in their |
1:45.6 | needles and retain them or keep them. So those are the trees that don't lose their |
1:49.7 | needles. In addition to energy costs is water preservation. |
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