I love early fall best. In the past week, the sumac and vines have turned red, but most trees are still green. And the wildflowers are still looking good because we’ve not had a killing frost yet.
I took these 15 photos last week in the upper part of Carleton’s Lower Arb.
See the album or this slideshow:
See the 2006 album or this slideshow:
Very nice Mr. Griffley! Seems the colors here might be fleeting. I was appalled to see a tree behind the Cow already half-bald.
Bonnie- That is a sugar maple. It always turns color and loses its leaves before any of the other trees. Over by Olaf, there are quite a few of them. You can see a tree with a bald top, then changing from red to orange to yellow to green, from top to bottom, all on the same tree. Actully, it seems these trees are turning color about two weeks later than normal. If I’m remembering correctly, they usually start about the second week of August. This year, I didn’t notice any changes until the end of August.
So you were the guy that I saw, when i was running there….nice work.
John George wrote,
Felicity and I were admiring the sugar maples on the Ice Age Trail in Chippewa County WI earlier this week. I normally think of Chippewa as a week or two ahead of Northfield in the fall colors, but most of the sugar maple leaves here (I’m still in Wisconsin as I write this) are on the trees and not even to peak redness yet.
Is it possible that a relative dry spell in Northfield has hastened the color change?
Patrick- There are several variations of the hard maple that turn red/orange in the fall. The variety that is tapped for maple syrup/sugar is the earlieast variety, as I understand it. Karen and I aren’t going anywhere special this year for a fall color tour. We are enjoying Northfield and Nerstrand Woods, this year. Saves a lot of gasoline, too.