Red Maple
Acer rubrum · Trees - Deciduous
Red maple
New Hampshire, 11 October 2020
Red maple turns earlier than sugar maple and is usually the first serious colour in the woods.
It is also the most widespread tree in eastern North America, and the reason is that it is fussy about nothing. Swamp or dry ridge, sand or clay, sun or shade - it will take any of them. Most trees specialise; this one simply turns up everywhere and outlasts the competition.
Looking up
New Hampshire, 13 October 2019
Straight up into the canopy, with maple, beech and birch all turning at once and a hemlock holding its green on the right.
Autumn colour is not the leaf making something new. The yellows and oranges were there all summer, masked by chlorophyll; when the tree stops maintaining the chlorophyll they simply become visible. The reds are different. They are manufactured on the way out, at some cost, and why a dying leaf would bother is still argued over.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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