Is there anyone who does not love the display of Autumn colours that nature puts on each year if you live in the latitudes where deciduous trees flourish? A love that is, tempered by the knowledge of the meaning which this colourful transformation signals – the end of Summer and the advent of Winter – only young children are blissfully unaware of the message and thoughtlessly kick their way through the ever-deepening piles of fallen leaves.
The change begins on the edge of some leaves on a certain side of some trees and gradually creeps across the entire tree, to be joined at differing rates and with subtly different palettes by other species until whole stands of woodland are ablaze save for the odd patch of evergreens. But this extravagant show, which has us humans travelling to see its most spectacular examples, is not some random quirk of nature, but a necessary part of the plant’s process – one without which the trees would not survive the coming cold of Winter. The green, chlorophyll-filled engine of energy conversion which is a leaf, exchanging liquid food from the tree and using sunlight to power the tree, now switches its production to producing a kind of anti-freeze which the tree reabsorbs into its twigs, branches and trunk to protect itself against frost damage. Once each leaf has done its job, sucked dry by its parent, it shrivels and falls to the ground where it will rot down and feed the tree through its roots and complete the cycle of its life but the byproduct of its transformation in Autumn is a breathtaking, spectacular, partial rainbow from yellow to rich reds…
Autumn colours show
as leaves transform their sap to
save the tree from frost
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Frank J. Tassone in Haibun Monday invites us to celebrate Autumn colours and the passage of the seasons…
“its most spectacular examples, is not some random quirk of nature, but a necessary part of the plant’s process – ”
Nice one Frewin. Thanks for dropping by my blig.
Much♡love
Thanks to you too Gillena and Much♡love
I can’t imagine anyone not loving autumn colours, Andrew, although I know there are people who prefer the summer season. I enjoyed the way you describe the change, how it ‘begins on the edge of some leaves on a certain side of some trees and gradually creeps across the entire tree… until whole stands of woodland are ablaze save for the odd patch of evergreens’. I’ve been watching it too. I also enjoyed your scientific explanation.
Thanks, Kim, I like to use art to describe science…
Very nicely done, Andrew!
Haibun like these, full of resplendent autumn, make me think it may be a nice season after all…
Every season has its plusses and minuses, Ain…
Everything in nature is for a reason, and, as you say so eloquently, very often, the reason is beautiful.
Thanks, Jane, I am beginning to get the Poesie into the Prose…
Indeed a transformation, preparing for winter ahead… we all see the coming of winter.
True, Björn, and the further north you live, the more severe the winter…
You have captured the transformation process wonderfully. Autumn is not my favorite seasons but, I do enjoy the few weeks in October when the trees are bursting with color. Truly beautiful
Thank you so much Truedessa…
Hi Andrew, this is an interesting poem. Thank you.
Why, thank you, Robbie…
Yes, well said – nature’s behaviour is always intentional.
But fascinating once understood, Paul…