Field Notes—

Autumn:Surrender And A Sweetheart Deal

By Curtiss Clark

Autumn is the season of surrender. Yet on our tallest and most impressive standards, our hardwood trees, we do not run up white flags. They would be lost among the billions of leaf banners already signaling capitulation boldly in red, orange, yellow, and bronze.

Leaves seeking release from the outermost limbs of life tend to make a spectacle of their surrender and inevitable demise, especially here in New England. There is no shame in that final separation. Their brief communion with the wind above the rooftops, their prolonged commission as compost beneath the hedgerows, and their return to earth is an honorable journey that deserves a showy send-off. As fall bears down with frost and darkness, the least breeze can unhinge legions of leaves simultaneously, and you can hear the applause as they hit the ground.

Winter is a compelling presence at our latitude. It is the beautiful little sister of death who imposes a measure of loss on all living things still connected to nature: loss of light, loss of food, loss of liquid, loss of heat. Survival in the plant world is a matter of letting go, shutting down, temporarily folding up those big plans for increase written in the tiny hieroglyphics of DNA.

The powder dry summer and hot September have delayed the arrival of the fall colors and may have muted the intensity of autumn’s palette this year. With the sun lingering beneath the horizon later in the morning and tucking back into it earlier in the evening, however, the gig is up for the chlorophyll in the leaves — that green energy-producing photosynthetic magic juice. Soon the trees will stop producing it altogether.

As the remaining chlorophyll breaks down, the carotenoid (yellow) and anthocyanin (red) pigments are revealed in the leaves. The same chlorophyll rout can be seen in green bananas for sale in the supermarket. The carotenoids come shining through after a couple of days on the kitchen counter.

The yellow pigments in leaves (and bananas) are always there hiding behind the green chlorophyll. The red anthocyanins, however, are produced when excess glucose builds up in the leaves of some species at the end of the summer season. When cold temperatures start to close off the veins feeding the leaves, these sugars get trapped and produce the red anthocyanins when they are cooked in sunlight of warm October afternoons. That’s why trees with higher sugar content, like sugar maples, turn brilliant red and orange. This little chemistry trick also produces the lifeblood of New England’s tourism industry.

Through agriculture, humankind has managed to secure an E-ZPass for autumn’s toll of surrender and loss. For us, it’s the harvest season — a time of plenty when we step on and crush good apples on the ground to pick perfect apples on the tree. The plank tables at farm stands groan under the weight of fresh-picked produce. The only thing we seriously think about surrendering is our dietary discipline through the holidays.

Even though that E-ZPass bill becomes due and payable on December 21, the winter solstice, we put off our debt to the certainty of winter with our festivals of light. Avoidance is almost a religion with us.

Each lovely leaf of autumn, however, bears an invitation to surrender, which the rest of nature, in its wisdom, always promptly accepts. It is an invitation to slough off the old, let go of the past, and clear the agenda for what comes next.

Leaves cannot let go until a layer of cells builds up at the base of the leaf stem. It is a callous that protects the tree against the pain of its lost leaf. It also seals the sweetheart deal that every tree has with spring: one new ring for its trunk, all new leaves, and outermost limbs reaching farther than ever before for new life.