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Like many midlatitude ecosystems, Mediterranean forests will suffer longer and more intense droughts with the ongoing climate change. The responses to drought in long‐lived trees differ depending on the time scale considered, and short‐term responses are currently better understood than longer term acclimation. We assessed the temporal changes in trees facing a chronic reduction in water availability by comparing leaf‐scale physiological traits, branch‐scale hydraulic traits, and stand‐scale biomass partitioning in the evergreen Quercus ilex across a regional precipitation gradient (long‐term changes) and in a partial throughfall exclusion experiment (TEE, medium term changes). At the leaf scale, gas exchange, mass per unit area and nitrogen concentration showed homeostatic responses to drought as they did not change among the sites of the precipitation gradient or in the experimental treatments of the …