Fall foliage

Today we thought of appreciating the beauty which gets wrapped over the trees during these months, well the month of October is also known as fall or autumn. Its the time when the leaves of trees in major part of US starts changing color. This major part essentially means the places where it snows, because fall colors have some relation with snow and frost. Okay, coming back to the colors. The colors change from green to yellow, orange, red, purple, brown and differnt shades or before mentioned colors. The color depends on time and type of tree.

In layman's terms during fall leaves start changing colors, starting with yellow then orange, purple, red and finally brown or faded. After this they fall.

The color change necesserily happends because of a cell layer which forms over the leaves about two weeks before the fall. This layer restricts the renewation of chlorophyll, hence other colors which were earlier overshadowed by green clor of chlorophyll start showing up. And finally due to lack of chlorophyll, the leaves die and fall.


I read in some travel book about top 32 must visit places in USA, one of them was New England during fall to see the foliage. New England area includes the north east states like New Hampshire, Rhode Island etc... I also read somewhere that there are two places in world for best fall foliage - New Hampshire in USA and some parts of Northern Japan. I am not sure about the later part but I can easily put a stamp on the first one.

I remember, we used to have nature wallpapers on our computers of beautiful roads with trees on the both sides bathed in colors of yellow, orange and red. Maple leaves flying on the road. And here we are, appreciating the beauty with our bare eyes in real. Nature is already so beautiful and this time its like it is on full bloom and want to again prove its beauty and the artistic sense of almighty.

Today, I started from my friends place in East Haven, CT for Topsmead State Forest. Well that was sort of disppointment, colors didnt came up good and most of the trees were pine tree which do not really shed leaves. So we head for Mt. Tom State Forest about 20 minutes from Topsmead. Ummmm, quite impresive, we took a trail to top of the hill. There is a small tower over there on top of the hill, you can see quite a distance of connecticut's forest area from the top of that tower. The view was mindblowing, worth 2 miles of trail to top. After that we head for Mohawk State Forest via beautiful routes of CT-4 and CT-7. Wow, its like whole of the forest is bathed in yellow color. Pretty impressive, breathtaking views with Mohawk Pond and a river flowing beside the route 4. Mohawk made my day today.

Its amazing to thought that falling of leaves because they are dying can be so beautiful. Amazing, another wonder of mother Nature