Victorian-Era Pressed Flowers Help Ecologists Study Climate Change

Here's an extremely cool tidbit of environmental news.  Ecologists are studying collections of pressed plants from Victorian England to learn more about climate change.  The early spider orchids from Southern England are in collections with notes showing the exact day in spring when they were picked, dating from 1848 to1958.  Ecologists are comparing those with dates when the same flower blossomed in the wild from 1975 to 2006.

After cross-checking their research with local temperature records, they wrote the following in the Journal of Ecology:  "Warmer years were associated with earlier flowering ... In both cases flowering was advanced by about six days per 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) rise in average spring temperature."  

Read the details at Yahoo Green News.  Just try not to cringe while reading some of the baseless "GLOBAL WARMING IS A HOAX!" comments on the bottom.  ;-)