Nature Notes (#692) ~If a year was tucked inside of a clock, then autumn would be the magic hour – Victoria Erickson

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Welcome to Nature Notes

Last week’s Nature Notes Bloggers

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. Pat in Colorado 5. marina 9. Cloudia Honolulu
2. Shiju Sugunan 6. MORNINGTON 10. PARK
3. Cockatoos 7. Monday Morning Chaos
4. Cloudia Honolulu 8. Pat in Colorado

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Note-Thank you for the comments and the support. It probably didn’t have to be said, but I felt the need to. Now back to my mental health escape…nature and reading…..

I really enjoy the fall color that can be seen on the pond. I love sitting on the deck and taking photos and of reflections in the pond. But the leaves are mostly down now, many staying green and just dropping off with no color change at all. Why?

 

BERJAYA

mallard duck pair floating in the pond

Why Do Leaves Change Color?

The green pigment in leaves is chlorophyll, which converts sunlight and water to food (sugars) during the growing season. As temperatures drop in fall: Chlorophyll production slows (and the green fades)
An abscission layer forms between the leaf and branch, slowing the flow of sugars to/from the leaf
Sugars build up in the leaves, creating new pigments:
Anthocyanins make red and purple leave
Carotenoids make yellow or orange leaves

Warm sunny days + cold nights (below 45) = vibrant color
Cool or cloudy days + cold nights = muted shades

I wanted to know why the leaves fall…

Below is a section of a fall post

Why Leaves Really Fall Off Trees on NPR by Robert Krulwich

According to Peter Raven, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden and a renowned botanist, the wind doesn’t gently pull leaves off trees. Trees are more proactive than that. They throw their leaves off. Instead of calling this season “The Fall,” if trees could talk they’d call this the “Get Off Me” season.

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Here’s why.

Around this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, as the days grow shorter and colder, those changes trigger a hormone in leaf-dropping trees that sends a chemical message to every leaf that says, in essence, “Time to go! Let’s part company!”

Once the message is received, says Raven, little cells appear at the place where the leaf stem meets the branch. They are called “abscission” cells. They have the same root as the word scissors, meaning they are designed, like scissors, to make a cut.

And within a few days or weeks, every leaf on these deciduous trees develops a thin bumpy line of cells that push the leaf, bit by bit, away from the stem. You can’t see this without a microscope, but if you looked through one, you’d see those scissors cells lined right up.

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That’s where the tree gives each leaf a push, leaving it increasingly dangling. “So with that very slender connection, they’re sort of ready to be kicked off,” says Raven, and then a breeze comes along and finishes the job.

So the truth is, the wind isn’t making the leaves fall. It’s the tree.

The tree is deeply programmed by eons of evolution to insist that the leaves drop away. Why? Why not let the leaves stick around? Why drop?

Raven explains that leaves are basically the kitchen staff of a tree. During the spring, summer and early fall they make the food that helps the tree grow and thrive and reproduce. When the days get short and cold, food production slows down, giving the tree an option: It can keep the kitchen staff or it can let it go.

If trees kept their leaves permanently they wouldn’t have to grow new ones, but leaves are not the brightest of bulbs (sorry!). Every so often, when the winter weather has a break and the days turn warm, Raven says leaves will start photosynthesizing. “They get some water up and they start operating and making food and then it freezes again.”

When the cold snap’s back on, the leaves will be caught with water in their veins, freeze and die. So instead of a food staff that’s resting, the tree is stuck with a food staff that’s dead. And when spring comes, the permanent help will be no help. The tree will die.

That’s why every fall, deciduous trees in many parts of North America get rid of their leaves and grow new ones in the spring. It’s safer that way.

So for leaves, falling in the fall isn’t optional. The trees are shoving them off.

What leaf colors and in what order can I expect to see them?  

 from Forestrycom says “The fall color change and flow takes place as three primary waves in mixed hardwood forests. The first wave is yellow dominated and you can expect to see yellow-poplar, birch, some maples and hickory, sassifras, sweetgum and aspens kick the season off. One exception here is sourwood where you can see its red leaf in mid-September.

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The second fall color wave is in orange. Some of the above species transition from yellow into orange but trees most noted for orange are silver maples and white oaks. Many people consider peak color occurring when this orange wave transitions into the third and final red wave.

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maple trees

This autumn color red wave of black tupelo, sumac, tallow tree, some oaks and maples signals the end of the fall display. After the red wave hits, the landscape slowly fades to brown.”

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ash tree

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leaves still on the trees in japnaese maple, norway maple

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 Nature walks are wonderful. But you don’t have to travel to special location to enjoy Mother Nature. There is so much to see in your own neighborhood or even in your own back or front yard. Get a guide-book of the wildlife in your area and learn the calls of birds and frogs and toads. So many times I hear a bird that lets me know what I am looking for in the trees.

 

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Nature Notes (#691) ~We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

BERJAYA

Welcome to Nature Notes

Last week’s Nature Notes Bloggers

1. Shiju Sugunan 4. Lee@ NEGardening 7. Cloudia Honolulu
2. Moon 5. marina 8. Hibscus
3. YARRA RIVER 6. Pat in Colorado 9. WEATHER

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PERSONAL OPINION-This has been a tough few months for my country. I have not been overtly political on this blog ever. But I can’t ignore that the current President has devastated our conservation/environmental, wildlife, Centers for Disease Control, FDA and all safeguards for humans and animals. This administration is promoting junk science and junk environmental beliefs while promoting fossil and coal fuels. All the protections for those vulnerable Americans for food and medical care are cut. People who happen to be brown are kidnapped on the street while our military is out in out cities. Programs that saved live around the world were gutted.

This week the East Wing of The White House is totally torn down along with all the history it contained to put in a gold ballroom right out of Marie Antoinette’s palace. The President lives in the White House and does not own it. It is the people’s house. Those states that voted for this administration are in some of the areas that are most prone to natural disasters, have poor health care, food insecurity, and poor schools. They will suffer the most. The children will suffer the most through no fault of their own. Children and adults will suffer and die because of this administration’s callous regard for anything or anybody.

If you dont’t want to follow me, then don’t but people from other countries must wonder about what kind of moral character the American people have to support this cruelty. Please..at least half of us are horrified and we are trying to fight back in any way that we can. I have a passion for education, conservation, wildlife and for my fellow human beings. You don’t need to comment on this but I could not be silent anymore as I felt somehow complicit. Political party does not matter as long as we take care of the vulnerable people, respect the law and take care of our fragile planet…..

BERJAYA

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It is fall and the days grow shorter but some plants were still blooming which always cheers me greatly…

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new england asters

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showy goldenrod,

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cosmos and bee

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Nature Notes (#690) ~Keeping leaves in your yard can bolster the number and variety of species around — and the perks go beyond just the fall season.

BERJAYA

Welcome to Nature Notes

Last week’s Nature Notes Bloggers

BERJAYA

1. Whales & Cockatoo 4. Lisa | Handmade in Israel 7. Pat in Colorado
2. marina 5. Cloudia Honolulu 8. Betty Crow
3. Shiju Sugunan 6. ON THE WATER 9. Cloudia Honolulu

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Thank you for all the kind wishes. It is a slow process for me to recover from illnesses, but I am getting there. So…….

My husband actually shared this article with me from The New York Times newspaper. We have a lot of trees and many shrubs that we have planted and a lot of leaves. Fall is ripe with the sound of leaf blowers where the neighbors blow all the leaves into the street where they wait to be picked up by the town who turns them into mulch. Meanwhile they become a slippery driving hazard and force pedestrians to walk around them as we have no sidewalks.

We usually rake the leaves, put them on a tarp and haul them across the pond where they compost. But this article has us trying a new way. I happen to talk to a master gardener who was talking about this article and she always chops her leaves up but she doesn’t want to do that now. Why? The leaves are full of invertibrates including: spiders, insects, butterflies and moths. We are killing the insects and removing an important resource for the soil.

Read the article if you like. It is an interesting story about the biodiversity that we have in our own yards. The normal lawn yard here with all the leaves blown away is devoid of like. Maybe I can be a little island in that vast desert.

BERJAYA

fall color in the trees

 

Gift article.

Why Leaving the Leaves Is Better for Your Yard

Keeping leaves in your yard can bolster the number and variety of species around — and the perks go beyond just the fall season.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/realestate/leaving-leaves-yard.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tE8.FDEN.wIsNwmfSKNta&smid=url-share
By Margaret Roach

Coming soon to a backyard near you: leaf drop. What’s your aftercare plan?

This fall, gardeners can turn to new research to inform their decisions on how to manage the cleanup — whether or not to “leave the leaves,” as the ecologically focused rallying cry has been in recent years.

That campaign has spread awareness that fallen leaves provide overwintering habitat for many ecologically critical organisms. But that’s not all they do. Now, we can look at theconsequences of leaf removal by the numbers, data that makes a more nuanced case for a gentler approach that supports plants and soil, and also offers insights into the most effective how-to practices to employ.

The effects of leaf removal were the subject of a two-year study published in March by Max Ferlauto, state entomologist for the Maryland Natural Heritage Program, and Karin T. Burghardt, an ecologist and associate professor at the University of Maryland.

From mid-March to late June each year of the study, the researchers set up traps of fine mesh netting on frames above test areas where leaves had been left in place and others where they had been removed. They then identified and counted what organisms emerged from each, comparing results.

“We actually have a lot more things emerging than I think many homeowners think we do,” Dr. Ferlauto said. “In a square meter of yard where you leave your leaves, there’s on average almost 2,000 insects that will emerge over the course of the spring.”

That total number doesn’t include decomposers and detritivores like earthworms or millipedes, he said, nor the tiny insectlike soil animals called springtails. What it does include are arboreal arthropods — species that spend only a portion of their lives in the fallen leaves and the rest above ground: butterflies and moths (about 20 will emerge), parasitic wasps (about 300), beetles (almost 400), more than 100 spiders and 1,000-plus flies of various kinds.

Rake up or blow away those leaves, or shred them with your mower, and the results plummet — as do the essential ecological services those organisms perform, including key pest-control roles by the spiders, parasitic wasps and certain beetles.

A marbled orb-weaver spider — yellow with brown patterns and brown legs — sits atop leaves and rocks.
The marbled orb-weaver spider spends part of its life in the leaf litter. Where leaves were removed, 56 percent fewer spiders emerged in spring on average.Credit…Max Ferlauto

 

A mourning cloak butterfly atop tree bark.
The mourning cloak butterfly overwinters as an adult, under bits of tree bark or in the fallen leaves beneath the trees.Credit…Max Ferlauto

“When you remove the leaves, instead of retaining them,” Dr. Ferlauto said, “you reduce the number of moths by 45 percent, the number of spiders by 56 percent on average, the average number of beetles by 24 percent.”

Besides those declines in abundance — the total number of individuals — there was also a reduction in species richness, the diversity within each group. In butterflies and moths, for example, that fell by 44 percent.

Dr. Ferlauto highlighted key takeaways for gardeners to consider while making fall plans.

Removing leaves, Dr. Ferlauto said, can affect overwintering insects in two ways: “You could literally be destroying them,” he said, “or you could be changing their microhabitat such that they don’t survive.”

Image

A pile of fallen whole leaves.
Though it’s common to refer to fallen leaves as leaf litter, debris, detritus or yard waste, they support a diversity of invertebrates that in turn provide services like pollination and pest control. Credit…Douglas W. Tallamy

He added: “The number one thing you can do from an entomologist’s perspective is plant an oak tree and leave the leaves that fall off the oak tree.”

It’s not coincidental that this viewpoint echoes that of Douglas W. Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware who is outspoken on the power of oaks: Dr. Tallamy and Dr. Burghardt, who, along with being the study’s coauthor, was Dr. Ferlauto’s Ph.D. adviser, have published research together.

Dr. Ferlauto understands that retaining all leaves isn’t always practical, and that even gardeners who are inclined to keep some have questions about the optimal method of doing so.

“Removing and shredding are equally bad,” he said, “but if you have to rake your leaves, moving them to another location is OK.”

Rake and relocate whole leaves — and not just to some out-of-the-way area like behind a shed, Dr. Ferlauto said. Resources probably already exist in such unmanaged spots; instead, for maximum benefit, transform a mowed or otherwise maintained spot by leaving leaves there instead, or moving some into place.

“What we think is happening is by offering that resource that wasn’t there in the past, you’re attracting insects to that leaf area,” he said. “These insects are almost in a desert, and a lot of them have a wandering phase, trying to find a place to overwinter. By preserving leaves in a section of that more maintained area, you’re kind of providing that shelter they otherwise wouldn’t have.”

To identify areas you can transition to this management style, he suggested considering where insects that were attracted to your pollinator garden or native host plants will spend the rest of their life cycle. Can you create a habitat for other seasons nearby?

“Maybe you have a tree in your front yard that you could rake your leaves under, as opposed to mowing them or raking them off completely,” Dr. Ferlauto said.

Additionally, he suggested using some relocated leaves as a mulch in existing beds elsewhere, which also can reduce dependency on inputs like bagged mulch.

Though it is often recommended that rather than cart leaves in bags to the curb, we compost them — an approach that does reduce what goes to the landfill — a well-managed compost pile achieves temperatures that will kill some organisms beneficial to your yard, Dr. Ferlauto said.

Even piling up the leaves, another oft-suggested tactic, can backfire.

“If your pile is too deep, the insects are not going to get the cues that they need to know when it’s time to emerge,” he said. “The energetic output they need to just get out of that leaf pile will reduce their survival.”

Image

A woolly bear caterpillar, an orange and black organism, sits atop a leaf.
The woolly bear caterpillar, which matures into the Isabella tiger moth, overwinters in fallen leaves. The total number of all moths emerging in spring may be reduced by 45 percent if leaves are removed in fall.Credit…Max Ferlauto

A lot of the focus in the “leave the leaves” campaign has been on not disturbing overwintering areas, which may have prompted the thought that a light fall cleanup could allow for a more rigorous one in spring without harm.

Despite recommendations gardeners may have heard to delay cleanup until after a stretch of 50-degree days in spring, or when the soil temperature reaches a certain point, “that’s really just not what we’re seeing,” Dr. Ferlauto said.

The research found no moment of peak of emergence, a point after which all the insects were gone. In fact, it only increased as spring became summer, he said.

“Leaves have fallen for millions of years, so of course plants and animals have come to expect or even rely on them to complete their life cycles,” said Rebecca McMackin, the lead horticulturist for the American Horticultural Society. “It’s our job as ecological gardeners to figure out how to incorporate these natural processes into our landscapes in ways that are both functional and beautiful.”

Research published last year, based on findings from the same yards as the Maryland study released this year, identified the presence of 24 percent less carbon in soils where traditional fall yard cleanup had been the longtime practice.

Soil carbon is a key to plants’ access to nutrition, and to the soil’s moisture-holding capacity, which is beneficial to plants and can also help prevent runoff.

Restoring the soil carbon is no quick fix, Dr. Ferlauto said.

“For insects, let’s say you leave leaves in your front yard for a year, we found an immediate restoration of that community; the insects bounce back,” he said. “But for soil carbon, it takes years to build that back up.”

Though it’s common to refer to fallen leaves as leaf litter, debris, detritus or even yard waste, the scientists deliberately avoided such negative terms throughout their report.

Instead, they simply referred to them as fallen leaves and in other neutral ways — or as an organic duff layer, evoking the ideal of the composition of an intact, diversity- and soil-sustaining forest floor.

Isn’t it time to give fallen leaves some respect for all the work they do?

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