Diapensia
Diapensia lapponica
Warm temperatures and steady year-round moisture are usually ideal for plant growth, but Diapensia thrives in extremely cold, dry, and windy locations near the North Pole. This challenging environment sculpts Diapensia’s evergreen foliage and contributes to the plant’s tight, compact, cushion-like form. Success for Diapensia is intricately tied to cold and snow: too little snow exposes the plant to the freezing force of winter, damaging buds and leaves; but when snow persists too long it shortens the brief summer growing season. Snow or not, cold summers mean slow growth for Diapensia—just 0.6 mm per year.
Botany Break-Out
Long-lived plants such as Diapensia may have started life under different climatic conditions. Ancient Diapensia plants in Sweden—which began life during the Little Ice Age four hundred years ago—now live in a much warmer world. As global climate change warms the far north more rapidly than elsewhere, plants growing in extreme northern sites face new challenges and an uncertain future.
