Ever heard of walking trees? You must have seen them in the Lord of the Rings! Well they may not be walking in real life, but newer generations of plants are definitely relocating to higher altitudes according to recent reports! They are moving up to 29 meters on an average every decade. This has been more explicit in case of the plants having very short reproduction cycles.
To understand the phenomenon, a team of French and Chilean researchers made a comparative study of geographical distribution of several plants in France over decades. They have noticed that the plants with short lifespan have shown a very high propensity to move towards higher altitudes. Bigger trees with longer life would take more time to show such changes, but various herbs which have several generations within a decade, are quickly shifting upwards to achieve the optimal temperature necessary for their own growth.
Considering these startling discoveries, it has been speculated that long living trees would be more vulnerable to climate changes because of their inability to relocate fast. More studies will be required in this field to understand it fully but it can be said that global warming is now becoming more and more evident no matter how much we try to hide it! Someday we will probably wake up to realize that our entire garden has moved to mountains leaving us behind in the concrete jungle and it will be an ‘uphill’ task to bring them back!