EVOLUTION AND FALL LEAF COLOR

THE WOODS ON SOUTH NINTH STREET

SUGAR MAPLES ON TENTH AND WILSON AVENUE

LAKE BLUFF OVERLOOKING THE ONION RIVER

MADELINE ISLAND AS SEEN FROM THE BACK PORCH

Friday, 8:30 AM.  46 degrees F, wind NE, calm with occasional gusts.  The sky is overcast and there is fog over the Islands.  We got a quarter of an inch of rain early this morning and everything is still wet.  A lot of leaves came down last night, and any serious wind or heavy rain will bring down most of the rest.
   Whether in the woods, in the front yard or on the city streets, the fall leaf colors are still the best right now that I have seen in years, perhaps ever.  But each year has its own fall color personality.  Sometimes reds dominate, sometimes, as this year, golds and yellows.  Some years a particular tree will have one color shade or other characteristic, sometimes something else.  There are so many variables of temperature, moisture, day length and sunlight that the final outcome is impossible to predict.
   And yet the main actors in the show, the trees, don't seem to care at all.  They are as healthy with one shade of leaf color as another, or with none but brown.  Its fall beauty is of no discernible advantage to the tree, except perhaps for causing a person to plant a favorite.  So what evolutionary purpose does all this visual variation serve?  Perhaps I have found the answer, in my own doggerel:

THE EVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE OF COLORED LEAVES
                                                       by
                                                  Art Ode

Trained in the methods of science

I always try to deduce

What purpose nature advances

In all that she doth produce

But for each methodology

And all my biology

I see no good in fall colors

Save the pleasure they give unto others

RED MAPLE, PAPER BIRCH AND COLORADO SPRUCE IN THE FRONT YARD