I look forward to the end of summer for a few reasons, but besides the cooler nights, no one can argue that mid and the end of September the landscape changes and the color of the trees jumps out at you. For that reason, a large number of people will travel to the Northwoods just to experience those brilliant red, purple, yellow and orange leaves from trees woven within the evergreens.Those awesome colors are caused by three pigments, which are CHLOROPHYLL, CAROTENOID and ANTHCYANIN.

In the spring and summer (GROWING SEASON) leaves produce chlorophyll & carotenoid, but the chlorophyll pigment covers the carotenoid, so the leaves stay green. Shorter days and colder nights, trees produce less chlorophyll and then stops, and the carotenoid pigment comes through, changing the green to yellow and orange on some trees. For Oak trees, the veins that carry fluid to the leaves slowly close and cells form at the base of each leaf that traps sap/sugar and this promotes anthocyanin that produces the red & purple leaves.

Come fall in most of the Mid-West, I understand why some people can become depressed or just doesn’t like this time of year. I mean all the
flowers die, grass turns brown, the trees are bare and look dead.  But thanks to the massive number of evergreens, even after the trees that produced those awesome colors go dormant, the Northwoods is still looks alive and green. for this reason.

Evergreens use chlorophyll to capture sunlight, and this chlorophyll also is the reason their green all year, but the needles store and conserve water and even though they stay green during the winter, evergreens are basically hibernating. Even though evergreens lose their needles in the fall, this isn’t done at one time. If you look in the woods or any yard, you will see brown (DEAD) needles everywhere, but new needles are growing (LIGHTER GREEN AT THE END OF THE STEM) as old needles fall off.

The wax like coating on the needles makes evergreens resistant to the cold weather and can even withstand frost. Then snow helps insulate evergreens from extreme weather by forming blankets around the base of the evergreens to keep the roots warmer. Give it another week and a half and those colors will start giving us that awe factor.