The giant trees of tropical forests are important allies in the fight against climate change because of their ability to ...

Tropical trees are better neighbors than trees in temperate forests, according to a study published in the journal Nature by researchers from 29 different institutions including the Smithsonian ...

Scientists discovered an unexpected adaptation that helps giant rainforest trees survive drought as they grow taller.

Researchers have found almost identical patterns of tree diversity across the world's tropical forests. The study of over one million trees across 1,568 locations found that just 2.2% of tree species ...

Northeast Australia’s relict tropical rainforests, one of the oldest and most isolated rainforests in the world. Credit: Alexander Shenkin Tropical trees in Australia’s rainforests have been dying at ...

Rose Oelkers is a tree-ring scientist with a difficult task: studying trees that don't have annual rings—or at least not very clearly defined ones. Currently a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at the ...

A new study has found that dry seasons that are warmer and drier than usual can stunt the growth of tropical trees, causing them to take in less carbon dioxide. While trees tend to grow more during ...

Researchers discovered that adult trees in a Panamanian forest are three times as distant from trees of their species as would be predicted. The spatial distribution of purple-blooming Dipteryx ...

New research suggests that trees near volcanoes might help scientists detect early signs of eruptions. By monitoring subtle changes in leaf color, researchers can now reportedly track volcanic ...

When trees get hot, their leaves begin to sweat. If they stay hot for too long, they deplete their water supply, exhausting themselves. It's then that photosynthesis, the backbone of plant life, ...

For a long time, ecologists assumed tree rings to be absent in tropical trees because of a lack of temperature and rain fluctuations in the trees' environment. But in recent decades, the formation of ...