Delayed Peak Foliage The Product Of A Dry Summer

By Nancy K. Crevier

Autumn in New England is a time to relish. Brisk nights give way to fog-chilled mornings that burn off in bursts of brilliant sunshine. The sky takes on a dazzling hue of blue, unsullied by haze, barely spattered with even an occasional puff of a cloud.

A New England autumn offers towering trees blushing glorious shades of red and orange and yellow as colors hidden beneath summer’s greenery come unmasked. Branches wave their colorful hankies at passersby, sometimes tossing them saucily onto your head as you walk beneath an arching limb.

So what is going on this year? Where are the snappy colors arranged in delightful palettes across the hills? Mottled green-streaked leaves spotted with brown and withered at the edges cluster at the curbside, instead of the expected pools of vivid crimsons and golds that crunch pleasingly beneath the boot. Most of the trees are clutching leaves still colored with shades of green. There is no indication that Columbus Day weekend, generally the peak for foliage season in Connecticut, will offer up more than a passing sigh.

Blame it on the long, dry summer followed by an unusually warm September. “Because it has been warmer longer than normal,” says Fred Borman, program specialist for the division of forestry at the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, “it has delayed the peak by seven to ten days. We have to start getting some colder nights to go with our warmer days.”

Indeed, it takes sunny days and chilly nights to produce the colors of autumn for which New England is famous. Cold nights slow down food production in deciduous trees such as beech, poplar, maple, and oak, and trap sugars in the leaves of maples, dogwoods, and red oaks. A slower food production means a reduction in the amount of chlorophyll produced, and the yellows and oranges that have lain beneath the surface of green leaves all summer are exposed. In the dazzling sunlight, red pigments are formed from the trapped sugars. It all comes together in a visually impressive display — most years.

The warm days and nights this fall are playing havoc with plant food production. Chlorophyll is lingering in the leaves and fewer sugars are being ensnared. Colors lack the brilliance of previous cooler and wetter years.

Some years may seem better than others, so far as fall foliage goes, says Mr Borman, “But it’s just about the same every year. It might be a little sparse in spots.” The spottiness can be attributed to a front that moved through Connecticut the last week of September, causing some trees to drop drought-weakened leaves. What has fallen, though, is generally from the lower part of a tree’s canopy, Mr Borman says, and is probably the end result of this year’s anthracnose infestation.

Anthracnose is a fungi that affects many species of trees, often the lower foliage where there is less airflow. “That’s when you see the spots, the mottling, leaves crinkle up and fall off,” Mr Borman says. Luckily, most of the upper canopy remains unaffected, assuring leaf peepers plenty of leaves at which to peep, barring unexpected storms.

If the week of October 12–20, the dates presently predicted for this year’s peak foliage, is not a viable option for gazing at colorful ashes, hickories, poplars, and maples, Mr Borman indicates that every year brings a “secondary season,” when many of the oak species peak, coloring our world with bronzes, golds, yellows, and rust. Watch for this display within a couple of weeks of the primary peak.

Perhaps an autumn like this is what Abraham Lincoln had in mind when he said, “Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.”

Patience truly is a virtue this year, if you want to see New England in all of her glory.