Missouri Botanical 
Garden Bulletin 
Vol. V St. Louis, Mo., September, 1917 No. 9 
AUTUMN FOLIAGE 
The prevailing color of the summer vegetation is green, 
and so closely do we associate this color with the foliage 
of vegetation as a whole, that we scarcely think of it as a 
color, but rather as the normal effect. Throughout most tem- 
perate regions of the earth, and particularly in North 
America and Europe, the onset of the autumn season ini- 
tiates a riot of color in foliage with which, in favorable sec- 
tions, there is nothing in nature to compare. Regarding 
these effects in central Europe it has been written: ‘‘What 
abundance of colour is then unfolded! The crowns of the 
pines bluish-green, the slender summits of the firs dark 
een, the foliage of hornbeams, maples, and white-stemmed 
irches pale yellow, the oaks brownish-yellow, the broad 
tracts of forests stocked with beeches in all gradations from 
ellowish to brownish-red, the mountain ashes, cherries and 
arberry bushes scarlet, the bird cherry and wild service trees 
‘purple, the cornel and spindle-tree violet, aspens orange, 
abeles and silver willows white and gray, and alders a dull 
brownish-green. And all these colours are distributed in the 
most varied and charming manner. * * * To be sure 
this splendour of colour lasts but a short time. At the end of 
October the first frosts set in, and when the north wind rages 
over the mountain tops all the red, violet, yellow, and brown 
foliage is shaken from the branches, tossed in a gay whirl to 
the ground, and drifted together along the banks and 
hedges.” With modifications suitable to our own flora this 
og eg would hold remarkably well for the region about 
St. Louis. 
While the autumn coloring of trees and shrubs in_ the 
Mississippi Valley region is scarcely ig Sa to that of New 
England and the Appalachians, except during the most fav- 
orable seasons, it is always attractive and worthy of an analy- 
sis which may serve to relate effect and cause. Contrary to 
the popular belief, the change of color in the autumn season 
is not an index of death, but rather an indication of gradual 
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