Sunday, December 23, 2012

Lovely Red Autumn Forest



 
WHY AUTUMN LEAVES TURN RED?

We all enjoy the colors of autumn leaves.  Leaves are nature's food factories.  Plants take water from the ground through their roots.  They take in carbon dioxide from the air.  Sunlight is use to turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and glucose.  The way plants turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugar is called photosynthesis.  A chemical called chlorophyll helps make photosynthesis happen.  Chlorophyll is what gives plants their green color.

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.  The green chlorophyll soon disappears from the leaves.  In some trees, like maples, the glucose is trapped in the leaves after photosynthesis stops.  Sunlight and the cool nights of autumn cause the leaves turn this glucose into a red color.  The brown color of trees like oaks is made from wastes left in the leaves.

Autumn leaves turn fiery-red in an attempt to store up as much goodness as possible from leaves and soil before a tree settles down for the winter.  The worse the quality of soil, the more effort a tree will put in to recovering nutrients from its leaves and the redder they get.  In the floodplain, where the soil was packed full of goodness, the autumn leaves remained yellow.

It is the combination of all these things that make the beautiful fall foliage colors we enjoy each year.

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