Among the Academies: Studying How Plants Adapt
How can plants adapt to their environment, and how will they be able to adapt to climate change? Those are among the biggest questions Johanna Schmitt has sought to answer during her career as a plant geneticist and evolutionary ecologist.
Schmitt — Annie to her friends and colleagues — said she has always been interested in phenotypic plasticity — the way plants grow differently based on their environment; say, the way a plant will grow tall and skinny if crowded by neighbors or shorter and wider if it has plenty of space.
“I've always been interested in the question of, are plants adapted to the environments they live in?” she said.