How trees fare under drought depends heavily on their past experiences. In some cases, adversity breeds resilience: Spruce trees that experience long-term droughts are more resistant to future droughts, owing to an impressive ability to adjust their canopies to save water, researchers in Germany report May 16 in Plant Biology. On the other hand, trees may suffer when they’ve known only wet conditions and are blindsided by droughts. … Together, the results illustrate how trees can “remember” times of abundance as well as scarcity. The latter, as illustrated by the spruce study, bodes well for trees’ ability to cope with a warming world. These findings are among the first to show that trees can become more drought-resistant by adjusting their canopy structure.