Re: Fall Color

On the road to Bridgeport:

I was hoping to get up into the eastern Sierras at the end of the month but looks like the color will all be gone by then

I was in Colorado a couple of years ago during the color season and the trees were artificially glowing. The state had to be putting lights under the trees to cause the leaves to be that bright.

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Old Dude

I grew up in the mountains of northern New Mexico, and know what you mean about them glowing in the fall, but since we were in Los Alamos, I always assumed it was the radiation.

The aspen were doing the glowing thing at the north rim of the Grand Canyon a couple weeks ago. Of course it was in an area with absolutely no way to pull off the road.

On the aspen subject:
I heard a naturalist talk on aspens last winter. Apparently these are very unusual treees. Essentially the only broadleaf tree that will grow away from wet, streamside areas. There is an energy cost to maintain the leaves during seasonal periods of low light, so there is a survival advantage to losing the leaves. The tree species that can get new leaves as soon as possible in the spring as the days get longer has an advantage. Aspens have thin bark and beneath the most outer bark, the cell layers have chlorophyll which is modest in extent but allows the tree a little advantage in the springtime to get a jump on other tree species in the production of energy and new leaves. Moose in winter often feed on the small limbs and bark. The limbs have sufficient nutrient value that during extremely severe winters, ranchers would feed their starving cattle cut aspen branches to help them get through to spring. And, of course, there is the growth of aspen groves from single trees and the genetic similarity of the entire group. Something about the bark containing a substance similar to aspiriin and used for "natural anti-pyretic", I believe.

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan