Best Trees For Fall Colors

As you walk daily down the street, an alleyway, or through the park throughout the next several months, you will gradually notice more and more of the changing of the season. Some of the best trees for fall colors bring about vivid changes. The most popular way people begin to notice this transformation is by the feel of the coming cold on their skin and even more so the visual change of color that appears to be adding and subtracting onto itself every day. What used to be a bright blue sky slowly becomes dark purple with grey clouds. What used to be a day where the sun woke up with you from the early morning and linger until late at night gradually begins to limits itself to staying around only until the late afternoon. The leaves on the trees that were once bright green leisurely change their color from green to orange, yellow, red and brown. Trees, no matter the season, produce their own emotions through the changing of their colors as they play a part in causing humans’ overall moods to change as well.

Best Trees For Fall Colors
Parrotia or Persian Ironwood. Photo: Jean-Pol GRANDMONT

The leaves on the trees change their colors because they are actually not changing their color at all, but rather transforming themselves back to their natural color. Plants make their own food using sunlight and the food they produce includes chlorophyll which is what makes leaves have a green color. When sunlight begins to dissipate, so does the making of the plant’s food. As the tree begins to immerse itself into what can only be characterized as hibernation, the leaves slowly lose their chlorophyll and show their true colors. Just like how flamingos are the color of what they mostly eat, when leaves are not getting any nutrition, they turn back to the color they originally are.

Green is a popular color amongst many people. In almost every survey, it is one of the top three most favored color because it is a radiant and natural-feeling pigment. So seeing the green slowly vanishing all around you may put some in a more personal downbeat attitude. However, seeing the beauty of the various colors that we only have the privilege of seeing for such a short time is something to be appreciative of. Nature is showing its true colors and wants to show itself off to us before it goes to sleep for a while.

Best Trees For Fall Colors

The best way to experience nature’s offering is to visit certain forests that harbor the most fantastically colored trees. To see the best exhibit of what nature is offering to show, one should be on the lookout for the red maple tree. Red maple, also known as Acer rubrum, delights the awe-seeker by displaying various hues of red leaves. Almost every leaf differs in its red color’s intensity. One leaf may be almost pink where the leaf right next to it may be almost a scarlet blood red color.

Best Trees For Fall Colors
witch hazel Hamamelis_Flower. Photo: Keichwa

Many trees give off unique color productions all throughout the fall season, but the most noteworthy would most likely be the Parrotia, Witch hazel, and Stewartia trees.

The Parrotia, also known as Persian ironwood, produces a neon-gold color in the late fall. One can see the progression from the early fall of this tree showing off bright yellow colors and watch it slowly throughout the season turn to a rich and brilliant gold.

The Witch hazel is an American native tree about 20 feet tall and produces spidery flowers that become a bright and lovely yellow.

Best Trees For Fall Colors
Japanese Stewartia. Photo: justmecpb / flickr

And finally the Stewartia tree may possibly be the most uniquely colorful tree because the different leaves on the same tree can be purple, red, gold and orange. Some may think that it may be too many colors to be clustered together, but surprisingly, the Stewartia, almost as if it knows how to naturally pattern its leaves, shows off an assortment that is as unique as it is more than pleasing to the human eye.

Nature is shutting down its own world fair of exhibits that make most feel connected to it by nature asking the best trees for fall colors to hibernate for a while. But it wants you to go out and meet the true colors of the stars of the show. And what better way to see them than in their most natural form that is not only artistic in their design, but makes you feel closer and more personal to your own sense of place in nature as well.

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