Tupelo gum and bald cypress (Nyssa aquatica and Taxodium distichum) are the main trees you are likely to find in perennially flooded deepwater swamps and stream channels in the southeastern U.S.A. Once established, they can grow in sites that are always inundated. However, they cannot germinate from seeds and establish seedlings in standing water. The substrate must be exposed at least once, at the right time of year, for that to happen. 

So how come you can find cypress and tupelo growing in perennially flooded areas, in standing water, that apparently never dry out? How do they get a start on the bottom of a stream or lake?

Pinetree Creek, an anabranch of the lower Neuse River, N.C.

The obvious answer is that they (or their parents, if they grew from stump sprouts or nurse logs) got their start when the site was not flooded, or always inundated, or that they got their start on some raised spot within the water that is no longer evident.

Last year, I wrote about how the warnings about human-accelerated climate change we’ve been hearing (and those of us in the business have been sending) for decades are, unfortunately, coming true. Almost daily, our news feeds remind us of this, or provide new evidence that Earth’s climate, and the environmental systems affected by it, are approaching unknown territory. We are seeing ocean temperatures, ice loss from the great Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, storm and flood regimes, heat waves, and fires that are unprecedented in human history and in some cases unprecedented in Earth history, period. 

National Weather Service heat warnings for California

As much as we’d like to think otherwise, the facts (data, analyses, results, observations) do not speak for themselves. As scientists and educators, we are obliged to explain and interpret the facts; to attach meaning to them. As things have come to pass in the scientific world, we are obliged to speak for the facts in English. 

This post was inspired by a discussion posted on researchgate.net by Alejandro Bortolus of the Centro Nacional Patagonico (Argentina): Is the use of English in scientific articles a real need for an international working language, or a sign of long-lasting Colonialism? The lively discussion can be accessed here.

You can’t rely on me for a comprehensive and coherent summary of the comments and reactions, but some key themes are:

•The (obvious) advantages of having a single lingua franca to support global scientific communication. 

•The (obvious) advantages of respecting and preserving local languages and multilingualism, and allowing authors and scientists to communicate at their best, which is usually in our native languages.