Noel Michele Holbrook

Sabbatical Academic Year 2025-2026
Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry
Faculty Fellow of the Arnold Arboretum
Affiliate of Environmental Science and Engineering
Professor Noel Michele Holbrook standing in a field wearing a purple top
Biological Laboratories16 Divinity AvenueCambridge, MA 02138
617-496-0603
holbrook@oeb.harvard.edu
Holbrook Group

Faculty Support: Amarilis Castro

Professor Michele Holbrook studies the physics and physiology of vascular transport in plants with the goal of understanding how constraints on the movement of water and solutes between soil and leaves influences ecological and evolutionary processes. Dr. Holbrook is currently working on questions relating to cavitation, stomatal mechanics, leaf hydraulic design, and xylem evolution.

Recent Publications

Knoblauch, M., J. Knoblauch, D.L. Mullendore, J.A. Savage, B.A. Babst, S.D. Beecher, A.C. Dodgen, K.H. Jensen and N.M. Holbrook. 2016. Testing the Munch hypothesis of long distance phloem transport in plants. eLife 10.7554/eLife.15341.

Mueller, N.D., E.E. Butler, K.A. McKinnon, A. Rhines, M. Tingley, N.M. Holbrook and P. Huybers. 2016. Cooling of US Midwest summer temperature extremes from cropland intensification. Nature Climate Change 6, 317-322.

Savage, J. D. Haines, and N.M. Holbrook. 2015. The making of giant pumpkins: how selective breeding changed the phloem of Cucurbita maxima from source to sink. Plant Cell and Environment 38, 1543-1544.

Zhang, Y.-J., F.E. Rockwell, J.K. Wheeler and N.M. Holbrook. 2014. Reversible deformation of transfusion tracheids in Taxus baccata is associated with a reversible decrease in leaf hydraulic conductance. Plant Physiology 165, 1557-1565.

Rockwell, F.E., N.M. Holbrook, and A. Stroock. 2014. The competition between liquid and vapor transport in transpiring leaves. Plant Physiology, 164, 1741-1758.

Stroock, A.D., V. Pagay, M.A. Zwieniecki, and N.M. Holbrook. 2014. The physicochemical hydrodynamics of vascular plants.  Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 46, 615-642.

Wheeler, J.K., B.A. Huggett, A.N. Tofte, F.E. Rockwell, and N.M. Holbrook. 2013 Cutting xylem under tension or supersaturated with gas can generate PLC and the appearance of rapid recovery from embolism. Plant, Cell and Environment 36, 1938-1949.