Anyone else head outside in the morning and scratch their head at where all the leaves came from? Did anyone else spend this past weekend raking leaves, feeling like you had to break out the garden tools a little earlier than last year?
Just two weeks into fall and nearly a month before the city of Indianapolis usually begins its fall leaf collection, Central Indiana is seeing leaves drop all over the place. As Hoosiers anxiously await for fall colors of red, orange and yellow to take over the canopy, the only hues many are seeing are shades of dull green and brown. On the ground.
With that said, the question on many people’s minds becomes: Am I going crazy or are the leaves dropping early — and, if so, why?
We spoke to a couple tree experts to figure out what is going on and what, if anything, residents should know about how to address it. So keep reading to get to the bottom of it.
Short Answer: Trees are hot and thirsty
First things first, you are not going crazy. The leaves are dropping early this year — plain and simple.
“We are not in the appropriate scope of natural fall color,” said Carrie Tauscher, state urban forestry coordinator with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. “Not even for early fall color, this is too early for the normal healthy range” to change color and drop leaves.
During a normal year, the process of leaves changing colors and then dropping wouldn’t be triggered until it started to get below 50 degrees in the evenings. Warm summer days and chilly nights give the best fall color, Tauscher said.
That said, it hasn’t been a normal year: Central Indiana entered a noticeable and documentable drought in mid-July. You may be thinking we’ve had some storms throughout the summer, but getting a downpour over the course of a half hour is a lot different than getting the same rain over several hours. The former just runs off and doesn’t actually get into the soil and down to the root system.
Those infrequent and quick rainstorms may help your perennials or grass, “but not your trees,” Tauscher said.
So what everyone is seeing now is a stress response in their trees. For the attuned eye, they may have noticed duller greens at the end of July and beginning of August as the trees were thirsting for some water and baking in the heat. And as the summer went on and autumn approached, it became more obvious to everyone as leaves started to fall from their branches.
Long Answer: Give the trees a drink
What folks may not see is what’s going on behind the scenes — or bark, if you will.
In the fall, what’s supposed to happen is that trees bring back all the good stuff, called their chloroplasts, and store it in a tissue layer over the winter. Then in the spring when the buds start, they will push those chloroplasts and pigments back out to the leaves. That’s the normal cycle.
But when a tree goes into stress, one of its survival tactics is to pull back those “expensive” structures and pigments — the things that take a lot of energy to make — earlier than usual. They hold it back in the hope they have enough nutrients to survive and re-bud again in the spring.
It’s a process called abscission, Tauscher said, where the trees retrench those chemicals and release the leaf. It’s a strategy for moisture retention, and this year is a severe example of it.
“Now, the tree has given up and said ‘we don’t have enough moisture to keep you going,’” Tauscher said, “so they are letting the leaves go.”
This year was particularly stressful, because the Midwest saw a wetter than usual spring. That means plants and trees grew bigger than usual because they were getting so much rain and adapted to having wetter soils. And then it went dry and they couldn’t get enough moisture to support themselves.
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There are certain trees that will be affected first, according to Mike Volz, the district manager with Davey Tree Co. Those are species that need more soil moisture such as river birches, ash trees, red maples, silver maples and bald cypress.
When stressed, many of these trees will bypass their fall color and go straight to dropping leaves. Upland species, those that are used to less water, will be a bit more resilient.
Many folks often think of watering their flowers or even their grass when conditions are hot and dry, Volz said, but few think that trees need watering, too. Even native species can struggle with the unusual weather patterns that have become more common with climate change — wetter springs followed by hotter and drier summers.
Even though we’ve had a wet last few days, that’s still not enough to make up for all the water that the trees didn’t get over the summer, and there’s a lot that residents can do to help their trees.
If your tree is bright red right now, or if it’s a dull yellow or dropping leaves, Tauscher said you need to water it at least once a week with 10 to 15 gallons of water. The root system will still grow until the ground freezes, so this will help it recover the moisture it needs to survive through the winter.
It won’t make the trees green again or grow new leaves, but it will help them be healthier through the winter and in a better position next spring.
Tauscher suggests a few ways to do that: Fill a few 5-gallon pails or some big bags with holes in the bottom and place them by the tree trunk. And if all else fails, you can put a hose directly on the small tree. She stresses to water the root system, not the leaves.
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The most important thing you can do, Volz said, is to test the soil moisture. Dig a small hole about 6 inches deep and put a probe down there or your finger and feel how wet it is — that’s the depth that water is getting to the roots. Then water until you can feel moisture has percolated down that far, he said.
Stressed trees are more susceptible to other problems: pests, fungus, etc. So keep an eye on them next year, because it will take more than one season to recover, according to the experts.
And when in doubt, call an arborist or tree service to make sure that your trees are the healthiest they can be.
Do you have more questions about what’s going on with your trees and how to keep them healthy? Ask us, and we’ll find out for you! Submit a question to the Scrub Hub using the form below.
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Call IndyStar reporter Sarah Bowman at 317-444-6129 or email at sarah.bowman@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook: @IndyStarSarah. Connect with IndyStar’s environmental reporters: Join The Scrub on Facebook.
IndyStar’s environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
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