Psychology

Ecology

Programming language

Social psychology

Philosophy

Neuroscience

Personality

Unpacking

Big Five personality traits

Evolutionary biology

Biology

Gene

Trait

Organism

Computer science

Equifinality

Linguistics

Phenotype

Phenotypic trait

Adaptation (eye)

Trait theory

Genetics

New Phytologist

Summary Plant functional traits are powerful ecological tools, but the relationships between plant traits and climate (or environmental variables more broadly) are often remarkably weak. This presents a paradox: Plant traits govern plant interactions with their environment, but the environment does not strongly predict the traits of plants living there. Unpacking this paradox requires differentiating the mechanisms of trait variation and potential confounds of trait–environment relationships at different evolutionary and ecological scales ranging from within species to among communities. It also necessitates a more integrated understanding of physiological and evolutionary equifinality among many traits and plant strategies, and challenges us to understand how supposedly ‘functional’ traits integrate into a whole‐organism phenotype in ways that may be largely orthogonal to environmental tolerances.

Why can't we predict traits from the environment?