SECOND INSTALLMENT: Philly Phall Pholiage Photos
by A. Mac
All Rights Reserved
A day closer to "peak" fall foliage colors ... there's no telling how good or ... mediocre ... the colors will be ... so, I'll take what I can get.
Here's a few more.
An ancient Beech tree begins to turn golden.
A park bench waits in the late afternoon for a pair of lovers to arrive
(I admit; I have a romantic streak in me)
Texture, color and form.
Mums signify autumn.
Forest interiors in the fall can be inviting.
Tags
Who is online
482 visitors
More in a day or three.
There are two photos there that are justawesome; the second one and the 4th. One for capturing the moment and one for the vivid colors. Just amazing.
Please click on the images to get a better look.
That park bench shot is absolutely magnificent. Here's what happens to the leaves in Autumnin China - one of the reasons I miss Ontario.
Wow Buzz, that isweird. They just dry up on the trees? Is it because of the weather or the types of trees that grow in China?
I believe it's the weather. I think that what causes the colour change in North America is a hard frost that freezes the sap flow, and sort of strangles the leafs. That doesn't happen here. Maybe it does in North East China, but I've never been there.
The fall colors occur as trees/deciduous plants absorb the green chlorophyll from the leaves back into the other plant tissues. This leaves the red, yellow and other chlorophylls in the leaves before they die and drop.
Leaves are nature's food factories. Plants take water from the ground through their roots. They take a gas called carbon dioxide from the air. Plants use sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and glucose. Oxygen is a gas in the air that we need to breathe. Glucose is a kind of sugar. Plants use glucose as food for energy and as a building block for growing. The way plants turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugar is called photosynthesis. That means "putting together with light." A chemical called chlorophyll helps make photosynthesis happen. Chlorophyll is what gives plants their green color.
As summer ends and autumn comes, the days get shorter and shorter. This is how the trees "know" to begin getting ready for winter.
During winter, there is not enough light or water for photosynthesis. The trees will rest, and live off the food they stored during the summer. They begin to shut down their food-making factories. The green chlorophyll disappears from the leaves. As the bright green fades away, we begin to see yellow and orange colors. Small amounts of these colors have been in the leaves all along. We just can't see them in the summer, because they are covered up by the green chlorophyll.
It is the combination of all these things that make the beautiful fall foliage colors we enjoy each year.
Mac,
I knew about why our trees turn color... but I wasn't sure why Buzz's tree just kept their leaves.
Feronia,
How did you know that? I am very impressed. You must really to be an arborist.
Lovely pic Mac. Niceadditionto the earth science lesson!
The picture actually was part of an article ... I forgot to post the link ... here it is;
Now that is one amazing looking tree. Thousands of years old, remarkable! We have nothing like that here in the east. Our oldest trees are usually oaks and we areplaguedwithailanthus trees, or Trees of Heaven, which grow everywhere and are hard to get rid of. It was the tree that was themetaphorabout how life can bloom in tough situations in the book, "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn"
Wonderful Pictures A.M. and thanks. Such a beautiful time of year and hard to believe sometimes it is the harbinger of the white death known as "winter"-yuck!
Actually the bristlecone pine is the oldest living thing on Earth. There is one in California, named "Methuselah",with roots over 4.600 years old.
Thanks, everyone, for the botany lesson about leafs turning colour.Appreciated. Although the photo I provided was for an oak tree and its remaining brown leafs stayed on the tree, there are many kinds of trees here, and their leafs just don't turn colours.
Will do ... but I think images could be copied and pasted from one article to another ... you have permission to do so with the animal photos I posted.
The article Iread about them made that point, that"Methuselah" pre-dated the pyramids.
That is one mighty old tree.
And yes, I murder trees of Heaven every week on my hill side. Invasive indeed. They also grow really fast, and with very week bark, so they are likely to fall on my house in a storm. So the one that is about 8 stories high, on my hill, makes me very nervous.
Snow tonight. All the trees still have green leaves. This should be a mess. ...
Oh yeah... I could loose power again... great! Better yet, a roof!