The importance of tree genetic variability in the ability of forests to respond and adapt to environmental changes is crucial in forest management and conservation. Along with genetics, recent advances have highlighted “epigenetics” as an emerging and promising field of research for the understanding of tree phenotypic plasticity and adaptive responses. In this paper, we review recent advances in this emerging field and their potential applications for tree researchers and breeders, as well as for forest managers. First, we present the basics of epigenetics in plants before discussing its potential for trees. We then propose a bibliometric and overview of the literature on epigenetics in trees, including recent advances on tree priming. Lastly, we outline the promises of epigenetics for forest research and management, along with current gaps and future challenges. Research in epigenetics could use highly diverse paths to help forests adapt to global change by eliciting different innovative silvicultural approaches for natural- and artificial-based forest management.

An increase in the frequency and magnitude of drought events threatens the health of forests and the economic, ecological, and societal services they provide. It has been widely demonstrated that trees undergoing a succession of stresses may accumulate lesions that in turn lead to a decrease in their vigor and eventually to death. However, recent studies have shown that a nonlethal stress should also initiate a stress memory, which triggers a faster and stronger plant defensive response when a new stress occurs. Although this mechanism is well understood in many herbaceous plants, a better understanding in trees is needed. The aim of our study was to explore the capacity of two forest tree species to develop a stress memory. A greenhouse experiment was conducted to evaluate the tree seedlings' vigor after one or two consecutive droughts separate from a rehydration period during the same growing season. No stress memory pattern was observed for the two tree species as, on the contrary, we even observed a stress accumulation pattern in sugar maple. It remains possible that some individuals in our study developed stress memory, but that we were not able to detect it. The fine‐tuning of experimental parameters and the conducting of longitudinal studies would be helpful to detect individual capacity in stress memory activation.