Why leaves change colors in fall?

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Now that we are midway through October, we all are observing colorful surroundings. Shades of yellow, orange fill our color palette. But have you ever wondered, why leaves change color in the fall? The answer is trees are just brilliant and incredibly genius.  

It turns out that leaves have some in-built intelligence that helps them sense that the winter is coming! This is because of some complex machinery that makes them realize that the night is getting longer and the day is getting shorter. Hence, the leaves change their pigment and we see these amazing colors. Now let’s indulge in some theory ( I promise just a little bit…) 

            Leaves are green in the summer in order to fully utilize the bright sunlight to proceed on a  process called photosynthesis. In this process, the plants utilize the pigment of chlorophyll to convert sunlight into sugars (Another complex process that demonstrates how genius these trees are!) But in the winter, due to the decreased sunlight, plants kind of turn their “inactive mode” on. (I mean we all can understand, “Why do extra work when we do not have to?”). Reduced sunlight can result in a minimal product yield from photosynthesis. Hence, plants produce pigments that consume less energy. The pigments possess different absorption patterns and thus radiate different colors from the visible light spectrum (see image below):



https://www.slideserve.com/adamdaniel/plant-pigments


    This is a very simple description of a very sophisticated process but gives a fair explanation behind the changing leaves. Thank you so much for reading! 

Why Do Leaves Change Color? | NOAA SciJinks – All About Weather. (2016). Scijinks.Gov. https://scijinks.gov/leaves-color/#:~:text=The%20Short%20Answer%3A,oranges%2C%20and%20yellows%20become%20visible.

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