A question or comment from a reader or other curious person always excites my interest. I enjoy learning new information and writing about what I have learned.
Most questions I receive arise from the observations of home gardeners and reflect their curiosity about the plants on their property and growing conditions as the seasons change. The latest question is from a Gloucester County resident who has observed that “the mistletoe bunches are larger and more numerous” than he can ever remember and “wonders if there is a reason, such as climate change, to account for this.”
His question reminded me of a column I wrote in 2015 about the abundance of large-leaved poison ivy growing on the Middle Peninsula and its possible relationship to climate change. At the time, preliminary results of two studies by a researcher from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and researchers from Duke University indicated that increased levels of carbon dioxide related to climate change were causing the growth...