A leafy rainbow signals fall
As we were sweating our way through last weekend, gardening in
T-shirts and shorts, we took a break to let Sparky the wonder dog
run around in the nearby park before joining him on a more
leisurely stroll around the neighborhood.
Irrespective of what the thermometer was saying, the trees along
local streets were announcing the arrival of fall.
A leafy rainbow signals fall
As we were sweating our way through last weekend, gardening in T-shirts and shorts, we took a break to let Sparky the wonder dog run around in the nearby park before joining him on a more leisurely stroll around the neighborhood.
Irrespective of what the thermometer was saying, the trees along local streets were announcing the arrival of fall.
Liquidambar, raywood ash and – especially – Chinese pistache all shone in brilliant color.
We paused to admire each briefly, but our color perception may be a little dimmed. We took a very short trip to Eugene, Ore., at the beginning of the month to visit family.
Along Hwy. 5, maples and oaks glowed in a rainbow of colors. Eugene itself was a riot, an explosion of color.
When the lead story in the local paper is about how city crews are going to deal with the oncoming blizzard of leaves, as it was in Eugene Nov. 1, you know you’re at the navel of the deciduous universe.
Outside our relatives’ dining nook, a Japanese maple glowed in a color I’ve never seen on a tree. My father-in-law described it as jack-o-lantern, and that pretty much sums it up better than the folks at Crayola could.
Then a package came in the mail this week. In it was a fresh crop of leaves painted in impossible colors, along with a note from my father-in-law describing how he got up one morning and could not see the sidewalk or street under their blanket of castoff leaves. He also apologized, saying he just could not resist sharing a few more with us. The leaves are now scattered here and there around our home, just in time for Thanksgiving.
New England and the mountains of the southeastern states get all the press, and tourists – “leaf peepers” to the locals – flock to those areas, where people are only too happy to separate them from their money. But the Northwest puts on its own show. The banks of the Willamette River glowed with color during our visit.
Most school kids know what’s happening when trees turn color. But in case you slept through that particular lesson, here’s a brief rundown.
Like other plants, trees use sunlight to manufacture sustenance through photosynthesis. Some of the stuff that captures sunlight is chlorophyll. The green light portion of the color spectrum is not effectively absorbed by chlorophyll in plants. The green light is either reflected by or passed through the leaf. This is why leaves generally appear green. Once enough nutrients are stored in the trees’ tissue, the work of leaves on deciduous plants is done. When chlorophyll is no longer being manufactured, the carotenes and other chemicals present make themselves known.
All it takes is a combination of shorter days, cool nights above freezing and mild days and the show begins.
The Internet is full of sites with “foliage cams” and daily reports. Closer to home, a trip up San Juan Canyon or through Cienega Valley offers our own version of fall color, with sycamores, willows and oaks splashed in bright hues, the shiny fruit of buckeye and the brilliant reds of toyon berries.
Even if we understand exactly why it happens each fall, it does nothing to blunt the wonder of it. Now get outside and enjoy it.
