Discussion: Colors

I follow Daily Overview on Facebook which posts drone or satellite "overviews" of various places. Today's is leaves changing colors in Bow, NH. ;-)

What a photo, what a coincidence! Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful New Hampshire! Can you identify any of those trees by their color at this early point of the season? For instance, those bright red trees...are they probably sugar maples?

Bright red trees more likely red maples. Sugar maples have yellow-orange leaves. There are other trees with red leaves, but not as numerous.

Red maple? I specifically planted a red maple on the parkway in front of the building about 38 years ago. I hasn't been doing too well here in the city. But at least it hasn't died.

For some reason, maps of its range include Wisconsin and Indiana but not Illinois. Maybe I made a mistake 38 years ago. I'm currently growing American Elms from seeds in my back yard. Those do very well in the city environment...until the Dutch Elm beetle finds them!

We are behind New Hampshire, which of course is the case every year. Here the birches turned yellow a week or so a go, then mostly lost their leaves in Wednesday’s rain. Some of the red maples have turned and lost their leaves, some are now red, and some still green. Sugar maples are mostly still green. Oaks turn quite a bit later. If you look at a big hillside there is quite a bit of color, but still a ways to go. Beech trees still green.

I agree with Charlie, the reds in the aerial shot are more likely red maples (a.k.a. swamp maple, Acer rubrum). There are a number of species of trees and shrubs contributing to New England's fall color reputation, but my subjective opinion (that's redundant I suppose) is that A. rubrum is the biggest single contributor to that reputation.

However, red maple is by no means consistently red in fall foliage: It can run a spectrum from pale sickly yellow through bright yellow and orange to the lovely reds. Any given tree is pretty consistent in its color year to year, but across the population of "red" maples, there is a lot of variation. I suspect (just my hunch, who knows) that red maple didn't get it's common name from the fall foliage; I'd guess it was either from the young twigs (the redness is especially obvious on the sprouts from the stump of a recently-cut A. rubrum).

Or, perhaps the most likely source of the name, the flowers. A. rubrum is about the earliest flowering of the common New England trees, sometimes even late March, certainly by mid or late April (depending on how how in altitude and latitude you are). Very tiny flowers, easily overlooked, but numerous and consistently red and more easily noticed from a distance; if you look for it, you come to appreciate that pre-leaf-out in the spring, New England has a second, more subdued but still lovely tree color season. As the swamp maples approach leaf-out, the redness of the flowers is replaced by the redness of the developing "helicopter" seeds.

Also as Charlie said, sugar maple (Acer saccharum) runs from yellow to orange. Specifically, from a pale blah yellow (like some of the aforementioned "red" maples) that doesn't add much to the autumn aesthetics, to a bright yellow, to an absolutely brilliant orange that, to me, looks like a giant candle flame. (Maybe not the right metaphor for our western friends right now.) Flowers on this species are a greenish yellow, not quite as nice as the red/swamp maple.

Other candidates for red brilliance in the New England fall landscape:

Blueberry. The lowbush (mainly Vaccinium augustifolium) can make a carpet of red in clearings and logged and burnt areas; the highbush (V. corymbosum), which like A. rubrum thrives in wet soil, can make a ring of red around a swamp.

Sumac. Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is a early- to mid-succession large shrub / small tree, after the grasses and raspberries, and before the pines and aspens, in the process of cleared land reverting to forest. It seems to often grow in dome-shaped baseball-infield-sized pure clumps of just that one species. And it is reliably a brilliant, brilliant red in the fall. It might be a close contest between R. typhina and the lovely but, alas, foreign and invasive (banned from nursery sale in New Hampshire among other places) burning bush (Euonymous alatus) for the title of most brilliant red fall foliage.

Anyway you look at it:

an Old October friend

Very nice Bob. I like the line...

....Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst....

New England genius!

Sugar maple in the yard yesterday.

Looks like Steve's "pale blah yellow". Requires photo shopping! Or, perhaps, CT doesn't really pass for New England:-). Or, maybe, just what you see is what you get.

Sugar maples turn yellow to slightly orange. Our red maples are red, but starting to go by. This one is a pretty nice specimen.

Our red maples are in various stages - some been and dropped, a couple in red but passing and starting to drop, and some just starting to lose the green and change to red. A marvelous sequence.

Colors just tumble out of the trees...
1, 2 on early evening ride, Dunbarton.
And, a dirty yellow color.

....or maybe 'dirty orange?'

'Agent Orange' as someone said.