Fall turns outdoor Carolinas into nature's magic show

The day before autumn’s arrival, Dr. Bob Powell took a walk in the cool morning air and surveyed his outdoor laboratory near Camp Croft.

Most of the hardwoods were still covered in green leaves.

"Just a little color," he said as he pointed out a hint of yellow showing through the green leaves on the poplars.

As the days become shorter, the leaves of the deciduous trees will lose their green color and show warm arrays of yellow, crimson and rust.

"The real colors of autumn are still several weeks away," he said as he breathed in the cool air and walked the grounds that run along the edge of Croft State Park.

Powell, who has been a professor of botany at Converse College since 1963, is fondly known as "Botany Bob." His youngest daughter Fern Powell, an optometrist, often joked to her college friends that her two sisters and her brother were all named for plants, too.

That’s not true. But Powell does spend most of his life outdoors when the weather is nice. From studying leaves to hunting snakes, he’s always observing the wonders of nature.

"I’m hard to catch if the sun is shining," he said with a chuckle.

On this recent morning, Powell pulled out pieces of cardboard with the faded story of autumn colors and began a mini-lecture on why leaves change colors.

"A lot of things have to come together to have a nice color season," he said.

When the conditions of temperature, moisture and the amount of sunlight are all in the right combinations, the colors of fall appear, he explained.

Around Spartanburg, some of the first trees to give us the gift of fall color are the sourwoods, black gums and dogwoods, he said.

"To have good color you’ve got to first have healthy leaves. A freeze will kill the leaves and everything inside that is supposed to take place. And then if we get a rain storm, the leaves will be knocked off the trees," he said.

As the days get a little shorter and the nights get a little cooler, the trees stop producing chlorophyll which makes leaves green. When the trees stop producing chlorophyll, the other pigments, that are al-ways there, begin to show.

The pigment carotene gives us the orange, the pigment anthocyanin produces reds and purples and xanthophyll shows up yellow.

While South Carolinians will have to wait a few more weeks to see the bright splashes of color, officials say there’s already a hint of red and yellow in North Carolina’s higher mountain elevations, with plenty more to come.

Peak foliage season runs the second and third weeks in October for western North Carolina and the Blue Ridge Parkway, while the show in South Carolina’s Upstate generally peaks about a week later.

John Nelson, a botanist at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and the curator of the A.C. Moore Herbarium, said most people believe that leaves change colors when it gets cold.

"In our area, by the time it gets cold most of the leaves have already fallen. The leaves change because of the change in the length of days. The amount of sunlight initiates it," he said.

The color change that humans are enjoying also signals a radical change for plant life.

"A lot of people don’t realize it but when all of this takes place it is a time of great stress. When the leaves are changing colors, they are really storing food because they can’t make anymore," he said.

There are different kinds of components in living leaves that mask the fall colors. The fall colors are always in the leaves, even in the summer, but while the leaves are growing they are going through photo-synthesis, the process of changing simple substances to complex substances that can be used as a food source. This process happens when there is plenty of sunlight.

In the wintertime, when there is not as much sunlight in certain parts of the world away from the equator, there is no sense in deciduous trees keeping their leaves all year when they can’t be used. That would be a waste of energy, Nelson said.

So, deciduous trees get rid of their leaves. But first they pull the green pigments back into their stems and leave other pigments giving the world fall colors, said Nelson.

Botany Bob pulls a leaf from a tree to show how the veins close off.

He points to the special cork cells that form at the base of each leaf. As the cork layer develops, water and mineral intake into the leaf is reduced, slowly at first, and then more rapidly. It is during this time that the chlorophyll begins to decrease.

"We really owe our lives to plants. They give us our oxygen and our food," he said.

At least once a day, he reminds his students to love their plants.

John Parris lives in Sylva, N.C., where he can look out his door and love the mountains.

This mountain living is the inspiration for his "Roaming the Mountains" column, which he has been writing for the Asheville Citizen-Times since 1955.

"I don’t write about the color until I see it. I can’t imagine it. I can tell how things are going if the leaves turn brown too quickly," he said.

The former war correspondent said he never predicts how colorful the leaves will be in his mountain view.

"All the biologists think it is going to be a good year. Not as good as usual, but good. I never know. Most of the time when they say it is going to be bad it turns out to be beautiful," he said.

Around his house, the maples and the sourwoods are beginning to show a little color.

"I don’t think many people really think about what is happening. I’m sure they take it for granted. If you believe in God, you believe in the changing of the seasons. That’s what nature and life is all about, the changing of the season," he said.

Patty Lockamy, who has been working with the Blue Ridge Parkway national park for 14 years, thinks the autumn leaf show is going to be spectacular this year.

"We think we are going to have a very average, nice, beautiful year. The leaves are just beginning to show some color and we are going to see a little more color every day," Lockamy said.

She said soon the parkway will have bumper-to-bumper traffic as the leaf lovers converge on the mountains.

Some people come back year after year, staying in the same place to get a glimpse of autumn.

"It is so spectacular to see the Blue Ridge Parkway during this season. If you have never seen it it is awe inspiring to come up to the mountains on a beautiful day and see the profusion of different colors," she said.

She predicts the best time to view the leaves will be the end of the second week of October through the beginning of the fourth week, depending on where you are going on the parkway.

The ultimate viewing weekend for most of the parkway, she predicts, will be Oct. 19 and Oct. 20.

"If you want to visit the higher elevations, like Grandfather Mountain or Graveyard Fields, then you may want to come the weekend of Oct. 12 and Oct. 13," she said.

"People should see some pretty color up through the last weekend in October unless we get a tremendous snow," she said.

"If the weather stays the way it has been with no more hurricanes, huge thunderstorms or snowfalls, then we should be fine and we’ll have three real good weekends."

If you plan to go see the leaves, Lockamy offers the following suggestions:

— Traffic along the Blue Ridge Parkway is usually bumper-to-bumper on Sunday afternoons during peak season, so try to make the trip on a weekday. The absolute busiest time is Sunday, between 1-5 p.m. Morning trips are better.

— Because of the traffic, the trip along the parkway will take longer. Prepare for the trip by filling up your vehicle with gasoline.

— Be prepared for sudden changes in the weather. Take a jacket.

— Remember to carry water and wear comfortable shoes when hiking the trails along the parkway.