tree colors
Oct. 19th, 2006 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jinianClear peachy red (my favorite)
Light translucent ruby
Pale garnet
Shades of tan, brown, dull wine under oaks when dry;
Shining gold and bronze, precisely edged, after rain.
Drifts of yellow leaves under birches mostly green.
Ametrine trees with peridot centers in Wallingford, wow.
(One of them is short, broken off a couple of years ago, and has much larger leaflets than the tall ones, though it comes in exactly the same colors. Normal for saplings, or a stress response?)
Embarrassingly, I know the species of only a few of these trees. I know the crayon-yellow male ginkgos, but they haven't turned yet. (Our ginkgos are not as venerable as these Hiroshima survivors.)
The dark red leaves of the flowering cherries are going to clear red at the tree tops, because the chloroplasts are dying out there. The green leaves of the maples are going to dark red at the tree edges, because the red is coming in while the chloroplasts are still well.
Inevitable geekery: Mechanisms of fall color -- but why make anthocyanins? The parasite rationale at the link isn't that great, since parasites will also want to choose healthy trees so their offspring get more food. It could just be an artifact of senescence in high-sugar species, but it's pretty widespread. The main scientific idea seems to be that
anthocyanins protect cellular components from light damage as the leaves die, letting trees reclaim them. (In tropical trees they may not be photoprotective.) Presumably in my local trees chlorophyll does this job when it's there.
Light translucent ruby
Pale garnet
Shades of tan, brown, dull wine under oaks when dry;
Shining gold and bronze, precisely edged, after rain.
Drifts of yellow leaves under birches mostly green.
Ametrine trees with peridot centers in Wallingford, wow.
(One of them is short, broken off a couple of years ago, and has much larger leaflets than the tall ones, though it comes in exactly the same colors. Normal for saplings, or a stress response?)
Embarrassingly, I know the species of only a few of these trees. I know the crayon-yellow male ginkgos, but they haven't turned yet. (Our ginkgos are not as venerable as these Hiroshima survivors.)
The dark red leaves of the flowering cherries are going to clear red at the tree tops, because the chloroplasts are dying out there. The green leaves of the maples are going to dark red at the tree edges, because the red is coming in while the chloroplasts are still well.
Inevitable geekery: Mechanisms of fall color -- but why make anthocyanins? The parasite rationale at the link isn't that great, since parasites will also want to choose healthy trees so their offspring get more food. It could just be an artifact of senescence in high-sugar species, but it's pretty widespread. The main scientific idea seems to be that
anthocyanins protect cellular components from light damage as the leaves die, letting trees reclaim them. (In tropical trees they may not be photoprotective.) Presumably in my local trees chlorophyll does this job when it's there.
