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The paper
T. Qiu et al., “Is there tree senescence? The fecundity evidence,” PNAS, doi:10.1073/pnas.2106130118, 2021.
According to Duke University ecologist James Clark, many researchers think that, given the right conditions, trees can generally continue to grow for a very long time, producing more seeds all the while. But the common agricultural practice of replacing fruit and nut trees every few decades to avoid declining yields belies this dogma, he points out. “Nobody who’s trying to produce seeds or nuts for a profession would rip out their trees and plant new ones if they didn’t have to.”
To get to the root of this apparent contradiction, Clark and a team of more than 60 researchers from 12 countries embarked on a massive undertaking: analyzing a long-term plant monitoring database to analyze the relationship between tree size (which they used as a proxy for age) and seed production ...
