Drought deciduous

Geoffroea decorticans is both cold and drought deciduous: it loses its leaves in winter as well as during particularly dry summers

Drought deciduous, or drought semi-deciduous plants refers to plants that shed their leaves during periods of drought or in the dry season. This phenomenon is a natural process of plants and is caused due to the limitation of water around the environment where the plant is situated.[1] In the spectrum of botany, deciduous is defined as a certain plant species that carry out abscission, the shedding of leaves of a plant or tree either due to age or other factors that causes the plant to regard these leaves as useless or not worth keeping over the course of a year. Deciduous plants can also be categorised differently than their adaptation to drought or dry seasons, which can be temperate deciduous during cold seasons, and in contrast to evergreen plants which do not shed leaves annually, possessing green leaves throughout the year.

  1. ^ Killingbeck, Keith T. (September 1996). "Nutrients in Senesced Leaves: Keys to the Search for Potential Resorption and Resorption Proficiency". Ecology. 77 (6): 1716–1727. Bibcode:1996Ecol...77.1716K. doi:10.2307/2265777. ISSN 0012-9658. JSTOR 2265777.