Plants and climatic stress

Alpine plants experience a multitude of physical conditions which for most other plants would be fatal. How do they cope with these commonly and misleadingly termed "stress"-conditions? The surprising observation is that if one relieves alpine plants from the presumed "stress" (from an anthropocentric point of view), most will rapidly die or become overgrown by others. It will be demonstrated here how alpine plants cope with thermal extremes (low and high temperatures), UV-B radiation, long lasting snow cover and mechanical impacts (unstable substrate) as the most important factors.

Lesson 13 Navigation Chart
UV-B stress Conclusions Coping with frost or drought stress Review test Stress by extreme radiation Heat stress in alpine plants The ecology of freezing tolerance Tolerance of freezing in plants Avoidance of freezing Early freezing events in late summer and autumn Low temperature extremes Concepts of stress and limitation What is stress? Start Learning objectives