This year the "Kanikonna" - scientific name "Cassia fistula" has blossomed so early unlike in normal years as like in the month of April, Vishu Festival which is the beginning of Kerala New Year. The traditional knowledge of indigenous people says that it is connected to the incoming drought or wet situation that may occur but this say is without any scientific basis., I wish to get some information from those who have done any similarity studies on this aspect..
Hi Ajith. All you need to do is to find if there is a relationship between the "flowering phenology of Cassia fistula" and the "climate". For sure, there are already studies conducted about this. Have you searched Google Scholar yet using those keywords?
Cheers!
Not only this year...Now almost every year in the recent times, Casssia Fistula (Kanikkonna) is flowering in the late December to January period, as I observed. I think this is something connected with the Agricultural meteorology in which the flowering of a specific plant needs some trigger such as sharp drop in minimum temperature or sharp increase in maximum temperature etc. In the recent times we can observe summer like situations in even February over Cochin. I feel that main driving factor to the flowering of Kanikkonna is the temperature, which can be attributed to Climate change scenario. Of course it is an interesting piece of work.
Cassia fistula commonly known as Golden Shower and vernacularly as Amaltas is one of the component tree species of tropical dry deciduous forests of Northern and Central India. It is national tree of Thailand and is the state flower of Kerala.Flowering season of the tree is late spring i.e. March to May. Early flowering of this tree species in Kerala is interesting and is possibly due to warm climate caused by global warming.
Thank you v.much Jayakrishnan, Eric and Aravind singh., Its quite interesting and challenging as it needs long term observations to check the statistical significance...
On the subject of an "early flowering event", may I point out that similar events are taking place in other areas as well. For example, fruit trees in Greece are having flowers while the fruit is on the tree, something that has not happened before. This phenomenon can be attributed to higher temperatures, variation in the seasons, etc
You need a mechanistic understanding of the relationship between flowering and weather in this species or long-term observations - a decade or more - or, ideally, both. It is easy to say 'It's [not] climate change' when something unusual happens, but robust attribution is difficult. Even more difficult is attributing changes to anthropogenic climate change rather that natural interannual variation.
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