It has been quite some time since your Sunday Naturalist was on the trail, but it just so happens that this set of pictures was actually taken back in November 2014 but never published. Once fallen from trees, it turns out that leaves not only find their way underneath logs and bushes, but they also find their way into computer folders buried deep in oneās computer hard drive.Ā Alas, and thankfully, lost items are sometimes found, and the colors in these fallen leaves seemed worth sharing.
So whatās going on here?
Well, as winter approaches many deciduous trees have a way of saving the valuable chemical compounds that theyāve built and stuffed into their leaves duringĀ the long summer days. Rather than let these valuable compounds drop to the ground, they break them downāatom by atom, molecule by moleculeāand storeĀ them in the branches, stems, trunk, and roots duringĀ the winter. When the green pigments get broken down, many of the yellow, orange, red and brown pigments still remain, but these too get broken down eventually, which helps explain why leaves change colors on the tree (hereās a more scientific explanation if you prefer).
These leaves werenāt so lucky, however. A windy rainstorm knocked them off of the tree branches before their chemical compounds could be reabsorbed by their parent tree. Because of this untimely death, Iāve decided to call this photo collection, āArrested Development.ā
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The Sunday Naturalist It has been quite some time since your Sunday Naturalist was on the trail, but it just so happens that this set of pictures was actually taken back in November 2014 but never published.
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