New Delhi, Nov 21 (ANI): While it is well known that animals can quickly adapt to adverse environmental conditions, mounting evidence suggests that plants can as well. A paper published in the journal Trends in Plant Science describes how plants are rapidly adapting to the negative effects of climate change and how these adaptations are being passed down to their offsprings. Plants are facing more environmental stressors than ever. For example, climate change is making winters shorter and less severe in many locations, and plants are responding. "Many plants require a minimum period of cold in order to set up their environmental clock to define their flowering time," says Martinelli. Because plants don't have neural networks, their memory is based entirely on cellular, molecular and biochemical networks. These networks make up what the researchers term somatic memory. "These mechanisms allow plants to recognize the occurrence of a previous environmental condition and to react more promptly in presence of the same consequential condition," says Martinelli. These somatic memories can then be passed to the plants' progeny via epigenetics.