Scientists have found that Australian eucalyptus can cope with hot weather by "sweating"

According to foreign media reports, researchers from the University of Western Sydney have found a new way for Australian eucalyptus to survive in extreme heat wave weather - let it evaporate a lot of water in its leaves in this process, which is similar to human sweating. The study used a facility called whole tree chambers, in which researchers can plant trees up to 9 meters high and control growth conditions such as air temperature, soil humidity and carbon dioxide level.

It is understood that the researchers planted six Parramatta gums in the chamber with the temperature 3 degrees higher than the average temperature, and the other six in the chamber with the temperature lower than the average temperature.

When the trees grew to more than 6 meters, the researchers suspended irrigation for a month, dried the soil surface, and then let them grow in an extremely hot environment of up to 43 degrees. When facing this extreme growth condition, trees will transpiration, that is, a large amount of water is transported to the leaves and evaporated, so as to avoid the damage of heat to the leaves.

Interestingly, there is no difference between eucalyptus trees previously planted at two different temperatures in response to this extreme high temperature. This shows that living in a higher temperature environment will not make them more tolerant to the high temperature environment.

In addition, the study also found that trees can cope with this extreme environment by rapidly improving the heat tolerance of their leaves and looking for water from a depth of 1.5 meters underground.

Next, the research team will study the trees of other species to determine whether this emergency is owned only by Eucalyptus or also in other trees.