Take time during this crisp month to admire the abundance of fall color in our area and the intricate beauty of a single leaf.
Words and photographs by Mike Dunn
One of the benefits of living in our part of the world is the change of seasons. Winter showcases the beauty of our forests’ skeletons, spring brings the flush of new life and summer highlights nature’s abundance. Autumn is a season of completion, where plants and animals prepare for the end of the year. I enjoy this predictable change; it grounds me to our place in the woods. I have trouble picking a favorite season.
But I’ve learned that there is one season that captures the attention of many of my fellow North Carolinians. In late October of one of my first years working at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, I was scheduled to do a teacher workshop at a school in Asheville. As I had done during an earlier workshop there, I drove out and planned to find a hotel room after the session at the school. But when I showed up at the hotel where I’d previously stayed to request a room, the clerk told me they were full.
When I asked about nearby hotels she could recommend, she laughed and said, “Hon, there isn’t a room available for 50 miles around here. It’s leaf season!” I ended up driving back home that night with a new appreciation of the power of fall colors.
But why does this color change take place? It’s a mechanism to stay healthy through spring.
The woody portions of trees and shrubs, as well as next year’s buds, are adapted to withstand the cold and drying conditions of winter, but tender leaf tissues would freeze. So trees have adapted by either hardening their leaves to the cold (like evergreens) or by dropping them altogether (like oaks). In preparing to do so, those leaves undergo changes in their chemistry that lead to vibrant colors.
You may remember from your school days that leaves produce food for the tree through a process known as photosynthesis. Chlorophyll is the critical pigment that drives this process and gives leaves their green color. During the growing season, chlorophyll is continually being produced and broken down. With the shortening day length in autumn, chlorophyll production slows down and ultimately stops.
Other pigments essential for photosynthesis that were present in the leaves all along now become visible. These pigments are what we see as the changing leaf colors. Their concentration and vibrancy depend on a variety of factors, including temperature and moisture, that can cause variations in the intensity and timing of the fall color spectacle.
Somewhat surprisingly, in the woods around here the change began months ago with the leaves of species like Painted Buckeye turning red and yellow and then dropping as early as July. The dominant Tulip Poplars are next, first shedding some yellow leaves in August before the entire tree turns golden in October.
The bright scarlet color of Black Gum appears here and there in August and September. In most of the Piedmont, our full show of color usually runs from late October through mid-to-late November. In our mountains, the color peaks from late September to late October, with our highest elevations, like Mount Mitchell, showing the earliest color change.
Most leaf watchers prefer the mountains for the grand show, where the elevation provides vistas of mountain sides covered in a carpet of color. But this miracle can be appreciated on any scale. We have a large Pignut Hickory at the top of our driveway that glows in bright yellow-orange colors in early November by the afternoon light streaming through the treetops. Every time I open and close our driveway gate, I marvel at this magnificent tree.
Sometimes, a smaller example of plant artistry catches my eye. One early November, a single branch of a maple tree on a misty morning in the mountains grabbed my attention. The rich colors contrasted with the starkness of the gray mist and the surrounding trees, most of which had already dropped their leaves.
Even a single leaf can create a memory. One afternoon in the yard years ago, the late afternoon sun low on the horizon, a shaft of sunlight shot through our woods and illuminated a single Red Maple leaf from behind. The backlit leaf caught my eye from several feet away and I moved closer. What I saw through my macro lens was a bold painting by nature’s hand, highlighting the textures and patterns of a leaf’s last moments.
I started noticing other leaves backlit by the golden light, each revealing intricate details that I had missed before. When magnified, the network of veins resembles high-altitude photographs of cities with extensive neighborhood roadways (the smaller interconnected network of veins in leaves called venules) connected by an interstate system (the midrib and side veins). This living grid acts like a highway system transporting water, minerals and nutrients to and from the leaf. Blemishes on the leaves look like large developments scattered among the travel corridors.
While we wait for our Western North Carolina neighbors to be ready for leaf watchers to return in force, take this fall to tune in to the small wonders all around us. You’ll be amazed at the beauty found in a single leaf clinging to a twig.
This article originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of WALTER magazine.