Europeans coming to America are surprised by the brilliancy of our
autumnal foliage. There is no account of such a phenomenon in English
poetry, because the trees acquire but few bright colors there. The most
that Thomson says on this subject in his "Autumn" is contained in the
lines,--
"But see the fading many-colored woods,
Shade deepening over shade, the country round
Imbrown; a crowded umbrage, dusk and dun,
Of every hue, from wan declining green to sooty dark":--
and in the line in which he speaks of
"Autumn beaming o'er the yellow woods."
The autumnal change of our woods has not made a deep impression on our own
literature yet. October has hardly tinged our poetry.
A great many, who have spent their lives in cities, and have never chanced
to come into the country at this season, have never seen this, the flower,
or rather the ripe fruit, of the year. I remember riding with one such
citizen, who, though a fortnight too, late for the most brilliant tints,
was taken by surprise, and would not believe that there had been any
brighter. He had never heard of this phenomenon before. Not only many in
our towns have never witnessed it, but it is scarcely remembered by the
majority from year to year.
Most appear to confound changed leaves with withered ones, as if they were
to confound ripe apples with rotten ones. I think that the change to some
higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a late and
perfect maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits. It is generally the
lowest and oldest leaves which change first. But as the perfect winged and
usually bright-colored insect is short-lived, so the leaves ripen but to
fall.
Generally, every fruit, on ripening, and just before it falls, when it
commences a more independent and individual existence, requiring less
nourishment from any source, and that not so much from the earth through
its stem as from the sun and air, acquires a bright tint. So do leaves.
The physiologist says it is "due to an increased absorption of oxygen."
That is the scientific account of the matter,--only a reassertion of the
fact. But I am more interested in the rosy cheek than I am to know what
particular diet the maiden fed on. The very forest and herbage, the
pellicle of the earth, must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its
ripeness,--as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever a
cheek toward the sun.
Flowers are but colored leaves, fruits but ripe ones. The edible part of
most fruits is, as the physiologist says, "the parenchyma or fleshy tissue
of the leaf," of which they are formed.
Our appetites have commonly confined our views of ripeness and its
phenomena, color, mellowness, and perfectness, to the fruits which we eat,
and we are wont to forget that an immense harvest which we do not eat,
hardly use at all, is annually ripened by Nature. At our annual Cattle
Shows and Horticultural Exhibitions, we make, as we think, a great show of
fair fruits, destined, however, to a rather ignoble end, fruits not valued
for their beauty chiefly. But round about and within our towns there is
annually another show of fruits, on an infinitely grander scale, fruits
which address our taste for beauty alone.
October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round
the world.
