A Celebration of Leaves in Every Season!

As I turn the leaf of my calendar from October to November,  many of our deciduous trees have dropped their leaves by now. Although I now look forward to the different kind of nature's beauty that awaits in snow-spangled winter, I do feel a bit sad to say goodbye to this year's leaves. So I spent an hour or two looking through my photo files for my most intriguing shots of leaves, just to keep them with me a bit longer.  Here are some of my favorites, photos of leaves from springtime bud break to winter's absence.

In Early Spring, the copper-colored bud scales of American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) open to release the tender baby leaves within, fluffy with down as soft as a kitten's fur.

The scarlet baby leaves of Red Maple (Acer rubrum) burst forth from their overlapping bud scales atop sceptre-like twigs.

When backlit by a low spring sun, these newly opened Red Maple leaves glowed like stained glass.

Lit by the sun, these translucent baby Red Oak leaves (Quercus rubra) also glowed like stained glass with multicolors of red and gold and green.

These baby oak leaves are probably another species of oak than those in the photo above, appearing less translucent and also much furrier.  But almost all tender baby tree leaves are tinged with red to some extent, due to the presence of anthocyanins, chemicals that carry a red color along with protection from the sun's burning rays.

Note how the presence of anthocyanins have also tinted these baby Bigtooth Aspen leaves (Populus grandidentata), adding an apricot-colored tinge to the fuzzy lime-green leaves.

Even from a distance, that apricot tinge can be seen on these sunlit Bigtooth Aspen trees, a warm color matched by the newly emerging Little Bluestem Grass that surrounds the trunks.

Because Summertime unifies most tree leaves in a nearly uniform green, I have failed to take much notice of them photographically,  although I am always deeply grateful for their cooling shade.  Occasionally, though, one may strike my eye because of remarkable circumstances.  A case in point was this Quaking Aspen leaf (Populus tremuloides) resting on gravel, a recent rain having splashed bits of gravel onto the leaf, where raindrops both large and small encapsulated them to fascinating effect.

I could do an entire post or two or three to include the many different kinds of galls that oak leaves play host to, but I'm limiting myself to just two for the purposes of this post.  The Dryocosmus deciduus galls pictured here, looking like tiny pink jugs with yellow stoppers, are caused by a tiny wasp in the Dryocosmus genus that lays her eggs on the midveins of leaves in the red oak group. Each tiny "jug" shelters a single larva.

This second gall, found usually on leaves of the white oak group, is called the Hedgehog Gall.  It is remarkably fuzzy, with red fuzz covering pebbled yellow spheres, which shelter eggs of the tiny wasp Acraspis erinacei. 

As Autumn arrives, the paths below Quaking Aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) will be littered with yellow leaves, almost every one of which may display green patches caused by the tiny larva of a small moth in the family Nepticulidae that resides within the leaves.  This tiny larva exudes a chemical that preserves the chlorophyll in the otherwise dying leaf, which allows the larva to continue feeding on living leaf tissue until it is ready to pupate. It will then retreat to a tiny brown patch at the base of the leaf to pupate there until it emerges to fly away as a moth in the spring.

Over the more than 30 years I've been paying attention to the leaves of Bigtooth Aspen (Populus grandidentata),  I've noticed that in most autumns (including this year) their leaves turn a uniform golden color.  But now and then we have a year when their leaves turn many different and spectacular colors. While walking a leaf-littered trail two years ago, I gathered together as many different color variations as I could find in just a small area, so I could include them all in a single photo.  So beautiful! I have no idea why some years the Bigtooth Aspen leaves produce such a gorgeous range of colors, and in other years they do not.

The leaves of American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) always turn a gorgeous copper color each fall, and when they fall and carpet the forest floor, they cause the woods around them to glow with a warm light. In this case, each leaf retained a trace of green color, matching the fern's frond that rested among them.

This Red Maple leaf (Acer rubrum) was floating on the quiet waters of the Hudson River.  I was struck with delight by the simple beauty of this gold and scarlet leaf so perfectly at rest on the water, with no background busyness to detract from its elegance. At the time, we were surrounded by masses of trees in their multicolor autumnal splendor, and there's no doubt they were glorious. But like a ruby solitaire, this single leaf epitomized the essence of autumn loveliness!

On another occasion, this Pickerel Frog eluded my efforts to take its photo by leaping onto this floating Red Maple leaf.  Which then provided the perfect foil for the picture-taking!

It almost seems unreal, does it not, the luminous pinky-purple these Maple-leaved Viburnum leaves (Viburnum acerifolium) appear?  No other understory shrub bears autumn leaves of this unusual color, the color in this event made extra-luminous, lit by sunlight veiled by wispy clouds.

The leaves of seedling oaks often contain all the colors of autumn in a single leaf.  A bed of Common Haircap Moss formed a perfect foil for the vibrant beauty of this one.

Talk about vibrant beauty!   The leaves of this small Sassafras tree (Sassafras albidum) glow with the color of fire!

The golden leaves of this American Witch Hazel shrub (Hamamelis virginiana) are rendered doubly beautiful by their rippling reflection.

Autumn draws to a close, and even the Red Oaks (Quercus rubra) start to drop a few of their leaves. I was struck by how lovely this pair looked, speckled with black and white dots and resting so quietly on the water. The river must have recently risen to cover a patch of still-blooming pink-flowered Smartweeds, creating a subtle green and blue background to set off the tawny leaves.

As Winter approaches, I await the first sub-freezing mornings, when sparkling frost crystals outline the leaves that remain on the American Hazelnut shrubs (Corylus americana) and other plants under the open sky.

The remnants of tattered oak leaves form a frame around a cluster of British Soldier lichens (Cladonia cristatella) amid an ice-frosted patch of Juniper Haircap Moss (Polytrichum juniperinum).

As a rising sun begins to melt the frost on this vividly colored seedling White Oak (Quercus alba), the leaves seem to glow from within.

Young American Beeches hold onto their translucent golden leaves all winter, but as snow begins to fall, occasional leaves flutter free to rest on the snow-covered forest floor.

A few minutes later, that same golden American Beech leaf faintly showed through a veil of fresh snow.

Winter's cold deepens and the lakes freeze over, allowing me to freely walk across them.  That's how I happened upon this large oak leaf arrayed within an escutcheon of white opaque ice resting atop the bluer-ice surface.  How unusual!  I figured that the dark leaf, absorbing the heat of the sun during a sunny day, must have melted the ice beneath and around itself, which then refroze overnight, creating this remarkable sight.

This oak leaf left evidence of its presence in the center of the road that will last through every season!