Originally from the East Coast, I admit to being something of a Fall Color Snob. There’s simply nothing out here like the square-mile-after-square-mile carpet of brilliant New England colors.
But I have learned to appreciate the more subtle approach of the Western Washington palette.
I grew up with the Jack-Frost-means-fall-colors theory, but have since become a bit clearer about what makes the colorful rewards of shorter days and cooler nights.
Many leaves begin to turn colors without frost. The change is a result of complex chemical processes that take place as the trees make the transition from summer to winter.
The food-making factories (leaves) contain chlorophyll, which provides the green color as well as manufacture sustenance (glucose). But the leaves also contain orange or yellow carotenoids and xanthophylls that are masked by the chlorophyll.
As the days become shorter and nights cooler, the factories turn off, the unstable chlorophyll molecules break down, and the other colors pop through, much to our delight.
The fall colors start in the higher elevation and spill down the hills, with early colors popping out in the cottonwoods, aspens and maples.
Other chemical changes may form different color pigments that delight us. The characters of the trees, seemingly subdued during the summer, emerge with the purplish and reddish leaves of dogwood, sumacs and vine maples; or the fiery reds and yellows of sugar maples.
If the conditions are right (warm sunny days and cool nights below 45 degrees), the much-loved brilliant reds and purples take the stage.
A red pigment called anthocyanin is formed from the sugars (think of a red apple’s skin) late in the growing season, and need bright light and the breakdown of sugar to dazzle.
As a rule of thumb, the more sugar (glucose) trapped in the leaf by cool nights, the brighter the color.
There’s always an element of uncertainty with fall color. Indeed, a drought can result in an inability to maintain photosynthesis that keeps them green, and the leaves turn quickly and fall.
And woe to the leaf peepers when the weather is on a warm, cloudy, rainy track in the fall and reds just don’t materialize as often or as brilliantly.
What we usually overlook at the first blush of color is that the trees are beginning the process of severing leaves from branches.
Then nature’s show becomes a different work of art, a sculpture park of bare branches silhouetted against a gray sky.
Book shelf
The first English-language compendium on all things mountain is “The Mountain Encyclopedia” ($30, Taylor Trade), 291 pages that aptly covers more than 2,300 terms, concepts, ideas and people from “a cheval” to “Zurbriggen, Mathias.”
There are also sidebars (10 amazing mountain feats, the seven most difficult summits), photographs, and various appendixes.
“Giant Trees of Western American and The World” ($27, Harbour) brings us closer to sea level. Al Carder compiles a record of the West’s largest trees, and compares them to the rest of the world.
As impressive as “our” trees are, he includes some eye-openers, such as the tule tree, a species of Montezuma cypress. An ancient tree at Tule, Oaxaca State, Mexico, is 1,000 years old with a trunk that is 38 feet wide at breast height.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songand word.com.
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