Three leaves of autumn

By Aaron Horrell

In southeast Missouri trees come alive each year when night temperatures drop into the 40s or lower on several successive nights. This sends the sap in the bark of deciduous trees downward, starving leaves of their lifeblood. As the leaves die they come alive with color.

The awesome colors of fall are all about tree leaves. One of those colors is yellow, and the tree that always produces an abundance of yellow is our native hard maple.

My photo here shows leaves from three of our native trees that turn various shades of yellow. The oval leaf at bottom is from an American beech. The leaf at the middle is off of a hard maple. The largest leaf with the nice yellow veins was made by a cottonwood tree.

These are not the only trees to produce yellow leaves.