Spring Bulbs for Schools Investigation results

Huge thanks! Professor Plant would like to thank all of the school scientists that have sent in records this year! You are all Super Scientists!

Since October 2005, school scientists across Wales have been keeping weather records and noting when their flowers open, as part of a long-term study looking at the effects of temperature on spring bulbs. The investigation...

70 schools took part!

They posted their results on the web. Average flowering dates Weather records

Bulb – blog & Twitter Pupils sent in questions for Professor plant & reported that they enjoyed the project and learnt a lot about plants and our climate. To see their questions and comments see the bulb-blog bulb-blog Eyton Primary School, Wrexham

Farm trip, certificates & daffodils funded by… Winners 2010 – Pentrepoeth Junior School, Morriston, Swansea & home educated families.

A long term study… Our climate is changing and so are our seasons. Over the next years (and hopefully more) we want school scientists to show how climate change is affecting flowering times in spring bulbs. In the short term there is plenty for schools to study.

Our records show that spring 2010 was much colder than in previous years. Average temperature °C Nov Dec Jan Feb March All months

Average temperatures were very low…

Many schools had to close for a few weeks because we had so much snow! Really Welsh Farm 11/01/10.

And there wasn’t much sunshine…

As a result the average flowering date for all our spring flowers was later than before.

Farmers growing daffodils at the Really Welsh Company – also reported that their daffodils opened 4 to 5 weeks later than usual.

Average flowering date CrocusDaffodil All schools /03/201024/03/2010 All schools /03/200907/03/2009 All schools /02/200814/02/2008 All schools /02/200706/03/2007 All schools /02/200619/03/2006 School scientists found that the majority of the flowers didn’t open until March 2010, which is late, as we would expect with such a cold spring.

We may have had a cold winter but our world is still heating up! With all these cold winters you may be thinking that the world is getting colder –not warmer – but this isn’t the case. Global warming is still happening and we still need to reduce our CO 2 emissions. Despite UK temperatures plummeting to - 22 degrees in places, globally, January 2010 was the warmest on record!