Posts Tagged ‘foliage’

Seasonal Attitude Response Disorder

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Monday, November 21st, 2011

“I don’t know how you stand living in Florida. I need the seasons”. This is typical response when people learn that I’m from Florida. Generally what they mean by “seasons” is six to eight months of long cold nights, one month of rainy spring and flooding, two months of grotesquely humid summer days and then eleven magical days where the chlorophyll-pigmented adornments to woody vegetation (leaves on trees), are awash in a wave of spectral undulations that lap at the foliage over and over until it sucks the life from each beautiful leaf and leaves them dead on the forest floor. I get it.

Having lived in Vermont for 14 years I can understand the visual spectacle that is leaf peeping. I appreciate the stillness and solitude of a billion snowflakes falling all around me in a moonlight hayfield. I love the notion that a 60 degree spring rain is a warm rain and the ephemeral flowers come and go too quickly. And it may be only two or three hot months of summer but after a long cold winter I can deal with 90 days of listening to someone ask me “Is it hot enough for ya?”

I get Florida too. The changes are just as subtle and vary from region to region and coast to coast. In the Everglades we have our seasons. Wet and dry are the most obvious but we have the changing of the leaves as well. For a few short weeks the Red Maples (Acer rubrum) and Willows (Salix sp.) slow their production of chlorophyll, revealing the carotene pigments that display oranges, xanthophyll pigments that show yellows and red producing lycopenes.

The feathery leaves of the deciduous conifer Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum) will brown and fall to the ground, explaining the tree’s name. Nighttime temperatures will dip from the 60’s into the 40’s. The swamp will cool for a few months and to us Floridians it’ll get downright chilly. Someone will ask “Cold enough for ya?”

Yep.

But I get it.

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Posted in Entries by Jungle Pete | No Comments »

Turn Red or You’re Dead

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Friday, October 28th, 2011

I have often wondered why on one hillside the trees have muted fall colors, while nearby on another they are radiant red. Recent research might be shedding some light.

There are four basic colors in fall leaves and a different pigment produces each. Xanothophylls is responsible for yellow, carotenoids for orange, tannin for brown and anthocyanids create the red and purple tones.

During the growing season green chlorophyll in tree leaves is broken down by sunlight and constantly replenished. As day length decreases the abscission cells, a special layer at the leaf-stem junction, divide rapidly and slowly block transport of materials. As abscission begins, a chlorophyll production wanes and eventually stops.

As the green chlorophyll breaks down without replacement we begin to see the underlying orange carotenoids and yellow xanthophylls. These pigments help capture light energy during the growing season. But unlike yellow and orange pigments, red anthocyanins are made during fall leaf senescence. It is manufactured from sugars found in the leaf. They produce greater amounts during cooler nights and sunny days. When a hard freeze comes along, production ends.

Why would a tree use energy to make a pigment in a leaf that is about to die and fall off? William Hoch, a biologist at Montana State University, found that if he genetically blocked anthocyanin production, the leaves were much more vulnerable to fall sunlight damage, and so sent less nutrients to the plant roots for winter storage before the leaf fell. The tree was not able to recuperate as much energy back from the leaves it grew earlier in the year.

University of North Carolina at Charlotte graduate student Emily Habinck found that in places where the soil was lower in nitrogen and other important elements, red maple trees produced more anthocyanin in the leaves. Apparently trees growing in more stressful environments invest in more anthocyanin, which allow them to recover more nutrients that are stored in the leaves before they fall.

Bright red leaves under a clear blue sky are spectacular to see. But what is beauty to us, is simply survival to a tree.

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Posted in Entires by Kent McFarland | 1 Comment »

Leafing Summer for Fall

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Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

The majority of Midwesterners dream of summer but there are a chosen few that love spring and especially fall. There is no better feeling for me when frost hits and the chill of the morning air makes for enjoyable walks through the crunch of crispy leaves. Beautiful colors sometimes muted by frosty whites create a whole new canvas to enjoy. While many see this as only a short transition to winter, to others it’s a time of rich colors, new smells, and family time at the orchard in search of the best Apples and Pumpkins.

Some of the best trees during fall include the mighty Sugar Maple and the amazing Paper Birch Trees. Rich oranges, reds and yellows paint the landscape and color it in such a way that it feels as if you’re in a whole different place that only exists for a few weeks each year. While the color is breathtaking, there is always the work involved with fall. Raking and bagging leaves are just part of the game but why not invite the neighborhood kids over for a jump in the piles followed by some hot chocolate. Nature has no clicks and never discriminates. Let it be the door into telling others about all the wonderful things outside. Maybe this is your chance at converting a new person to be a Nature Nerd!

As fall slowly fades away, the forest floor turns to color as leaves fall and find their resting place on the ground. Decomposition waits for nothing and colors soon dissolve to a much more boring palette. Leaves begin to vanish just in time for the first snow falls to cover up the now dirty landscape with a fresh new blanket. What were rich greens turned to vibrant color and finally end up in pure whites so bright, to look outside without sunglasses is blinding. As with every time of year, seasons come and go but for the lucky ones, another round is just around the corner.

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Posted in Entries by Josh Haas | No Comments »

Rocky Mountain Leaf Peep

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Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

Until a couple of years ago, I couldn’t tell you the difference between a leaf peeper and a brown creeper. But a fall trip to New England changed all that. Now I know a leaf peeper isn’t a tree with eyeballs or an invasive species. Well, that last part isn’t completely true. Leaf peepers are invasive. Flocking to New England from places like Miami, Los Angeles and elsewhere in the world, they’re not locals. They invade the Northeast with a singular purpose in mind, to view wild lands and rural landscapes when the colors of turning leaves are most varied and vibrant.

Make no doubt about it. For a human possessing even a smidgen of appreciation for the often bold, sometimes subdued tapestry of color and texture of turning leaves, a leaf peep in New England is unforgettable. But although the northern Rocky Mountains don’t draw too many fall tourists who come just to see the leaves, our peep show is nothing to sneeze at. Turning aspens may range in color from fresh-churned butter to fiery orange and even crimson. The large leaves of black cottonwoods take on a bright yellow mantle, the more dramatic for its contrast with their dark, deeply furrowed trunks. Chokecherries line the creek bottoms in colors ranging from orange to ochre. Skunk brush on the hillsides flames brilliant crimson. The leaf show in the West may not rival the sheer scope and drama of that in New England, but I’m still happy to be a peeper, Rocky Mountain style.

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Posted in Jack Ballard | No Comments »

Fall Foliage

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Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Location: Norwich, VT
My favorite tree is the sugar maple. It’s a remarkably generous tree, giving delectably sweet syrup each spring, cool shade in the summer and vibrant eye candy in the fall. This pale grainy hardwood makes beautiful furniture, and burns long and bright in my woodstove on the rare occasion that I have a few logs of it to through on the fire. As a photographer, I have a passion (obsession?) for photographing its colorful leaves each autumn. Likewise, the daily conversation from mid-September through mid-October inevitably turns to the state of the current year’s fall foliage. Is it peak color? Is this year better or worse than last year? And why?
All deciduous trees turn color in the fall just before dropping their leaves. As the number of daylight hours decreases, so does a trees ability to produce chlorophyll, which makes their leaves green. As chlorophyll production ceases, cartenoids which cause yellow, orange and brown leaf color and anthocyanins which cause reds (and blue fruit hues) become more prominent in the leaves of trees depending on the species. Among maples, fall leaf color is a way to identify the tree. Red maple turn bright red, whereas sugar maple turn orange and red. Black maple turn yellow, and striped maple simply lose all color.
Temperature and precipitation determine the brilliance of the landscape. The most glorious display occurs when it’s a wet spring, a sunny summer and a mild fall in which the nights are cool, but not below freezing. Is this year better than last year? This avid leaf-peeper can’t tell, but it sure seems as if peak color came a week earlier.

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Posted in Entries by Lisa Densmore | 2 Comments »