At CREA-Mont-Blanc’s last Science Sandwich, Christophe Randin, ecologist at the Université de Lausanne and curator at the Vaud Canton’s Museum and Botanical Gardens, presented the Alp’s « warrior » plants and their impressive capacity for adaptation. Thanks to refuges in the unique micro-topography of mountains, some of them have managed to survive millions of years of changing climates. Will they be able to withstand today’s rapid climate warming?
Edelweiss (Leontopodium alpinum), a symbol of the Alps, is actually a relatively late arrival: during the colder clime of the last glaciation, alpine and steppe bridges formed between the Alps and Asia, allowing the Edelweiss to travel between 1 and 10 km a year from modern-day China to the Alps. Photo : C. Dentant (Parc national des Ecrins)
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