Colored Leaves

Question - How and why do leaves change colors?

Answer - Pigments, weather and amount of night.

Haven't you always wondered exactly why the colors of leaves change? How does it change? There's more to what you thought the answer would be.

The one you may know is involved with the pigments. There are three type of pigments that are involved with the color changes according to www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo. There's chlorophyll which givesleaves their basic green color. The plant in which the leaves are connected to need the sunlight to manufacture sugars for their food. Carotenoids produce the yellow, orange and brown colors . Then there's anthocyanins, which appear in the watery liquid of leaf cells.

The weather needs to go from hot to cool for the leaves to begin to change colors during the fall season. Cool to cold for the winter. Cold to warm for the spring. Warm to hot for the summer. The weather helps for the leaves to change colors at certain times of the year which shows why it appears to happen out of no where before your eyes.

The one that might be somewhat surprising to you is the length of night. The timing of color change and leaf fall are primarily regulated by the calendar, that is, the increasing length of night. Temperature, food and other aspects aren't as important for the leaves to change colors. Biochemical processes in the leaf begin to change the colors in the leaf when there's less sunlight and more darkness.

If you don't know, now you know.