Nature’s Winter Resilience

Rhododendron copes by rolling up its leaves

Georgia experienced some cold overnight temperatures this week; while not our lowest (I have seen 5 degrees here before), temperatures did go down to 21 degrees two nights in a row. As I went outside to refill the bird feeder, I noticed that some of the evergreen plants that I bragged about in last week’s blog were looking quite bad. Surely they were goners?

In the case of the alumroot (Heuchera americana) in a pot by the door, the wide leaves looked almost black and shriveled. I walked around a bit to look at some of my other broad-leaved evergreens like the ginger (Hexastylis shuttleworthii), and shrubs like Florida anise (Illicium floridanum) and rhododendron (Rhododendron sp). They were definitely affected by the cold. 

Heuchera americana looking pretty bad in a pot by the door

How did the needle-leaved evergreens look? I checked out the hemlock tree (Tsuga canadensis) to see how its needles were faring. Skinny and covered with a light waxy coating, they showed no difference from how they look in above freezing temperatures.

Luckily nature copes, either by design of the leaves (like the needle-leaved evergreens) or by being able to rebound. Once the temperature reaches above 32 degrees, the leaves on the broad-leaved evergreens return to normal. The Rhododendron and Illicium leaves uncurl and plump up as if nothing had happened. The leaves on the Heuchera were amazingly recovered as well. I truly admire nature’s resilience, but then I guess she’s been doing this for a very long time. Which is good because the Georgia groundhog just predicted six more weeks of winter ....

Heuchera americana as the temperature exceeds 32 degrees - magic!