Conditions right for brilliant color on leaves here

Warm days, cool nights and recent rain should add brilliant color to the region in the next two weeks.

Recent rainfall and cooler nighttime temperatures should help nature's production of brilliant red, orange and yellow fall colors over the next couple of weeks.

Even with an extended hot summer and drought-like conditions this year, weather shouldn't delay the changes of leaf colors in the area, said Joe Garvey, a forester for the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Officials in St. Louis expect delays in changing colors, but Garvey said Southeast Missouri has different site conditions than the St. Louis area.

"We've just had a bunch of wonderful rain and as long as the ground stays moist, we'll have a nice fall," said Lucinda Swatzell, botanist professor at Southeast Missouri State University.

Swatzell said there are key factors that affect the color change in leaves, including day and nighttime temperatures.

To have a beautiful fall, Swatzell said that day temperatures need to stay warm and nighttime needs to be cool but not freezing.

"As it begins to cool, the chlorophyl in the leaves break down and exposes all the beautiful fall colors," she said. Freezing temperatures will cause the leaves to turn shades of brown.

When the chlorophyll is reduced, color-producing chemicals, which are always present within the leaf, begin to show.

According to Garvey, chlorophyl has started breaking down in leaves this year.

"Some trees are starting to show color now," he said. "There are some faint tints of color in sugar maples."

Around the second week of October is when the leaves should be at the brightest fall colors.

Garvey has been working for the Conservation Department for 26 years, and believes fall is the best time of year to explore the area's forests.

"It's hard to predict how bright the leaves will get this fall; some people could have a real bang-up year or we may have a bust," he said.

The hills throughout Cape Girardeau, Perry and Bollinger Counties are some of the best places to witness nature's fall colors, Garvey said.

Trees differ in color from one species to the next, but Swatzell said maples produce brilliant orange to yellow hues and oaks are going to turn bright reds.

"We will have some color this year," Garvey said. "Whether it will be the best year ever, I don't know."

jfreeze@semissourian.com