Every spruce does the same thing each autumn: they perform a “bud set,” where they stop growing in anticipation of the first frost. The Norwegian scientists have observed that among hundreds of genetically identical trees, grown from seedling to adult side by side in the forest, the trees that had been embryos under a cold climate invariably set their buds two to three weeks earlier than do their counterparts, anticipating a longer, colder winter. All of the trees in their study were identically adapted, but the early bud-setters remembered their cold seedhoods, even though they were
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