Leaves: Don't Forget To Let Them Blow Your Mind

Paul Cézanne, Forest [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I thought we might all need a break from the awfulness and chaos of the world, so I am going to talk to you about leaves.

I live in a part of the world where there are a lot of trees, and a lot of them are deciduous (a word I seem to recall learning at a surprisingly young age). It is also an area of great seasonal variation. What this means is that in the fall, leaves dry up and fall off of trees, and then in the spring, new leaves grow.

We say that like it's nothing. But if you think about it for even a few minutes, it can become completely mind-boggling. Thing about all those trees. Think how many leaves are on each tree. Even a small group of trees is generating millions of leaves. And all those leaves are reborn every year. 

In fact, this site estimates there are 1.5 to 2 million leaves just on a single oak tree. According to these people who seem to know what they're talking about, a healthy forest has about 40-60 trees per acre, and an overstocked one can have 100-200 per acre (interesting facts about how forests are getting denser because there used to be more forest fires). According to this estimate, there are 30.2 million acres of forest in New York State. So just looking at actual areas of forest, and not counting the zillions of just incidental trees just around, and even lowballing the estimate, that's 1,000,000 times 50 times 30 million = 1,500,000,000,000,000 leaves just in NYS.

Somehow in the fall I don't think about leaves as much, maybe because I live in a condo and don't have to rake leaves and clean them up, or maybe because it's back to school time and I'm thinking of other things. Or maybe it's just that death is less impressive, somehow, than life. I guess in the fall we're all thinking about the beauty of the "fall colors," which is sort of seeing the leaves as a giant collective instead of the little miracle individuals that they are.

Then all winter, there's something so natural about the leafless trees that this starts to seem like their normal state. They're like the furniture -- so familiar, their existence fades into the background. I start to think of "trees" as those naked, but still beautiful, things that stand out starkly against a snowy background.  

But then in the spring -- OMG. Where I live, there's a kind of long late winter, and just as it's starting to warm up, you start to notice buds all over. Insanely, each of those millions of trees is producing its own thousands and thousands of leaves. I don't know what your area is like, but even in the city where I live, I walk past tons and tons of trees, and a quick trip on an interstate highway you see thousands and thousands of trees. All being birthed, a new, and all emerging over a few day period. How insane is that.

For me this is much more interesting and exciting than thinking about "grains of sand on beaches" or "stars in galaxies" or whatever. Each of those leaves is made up of multiple complicated parts, and each has an actual function, soaking up sunlight and releasing (life-giving!) oxygen. Each leaf has internal structure of different kinds of cells, all working together to do photosynthesis. And each year, each one dies off and is replaced by a completely new one. Even thinking about it in the cool light of day, I just can't get over it.

I remember when I was a little kid, there would be phases of life where the idea of the "seasons" would kind of fade into the background of life. I mean, I would see the leaves fall, and the snow come, and the new plants, and the warmth of summer, but my mind would kind of be elsewhere. Then, occasionally, I would notice something dramatic or beautiful or I'd be wading through the fall leaves on the ground and I'd be recalled to the whole thing. Oh yeah. Fall means leaves. And here are leaves. Because it's fall!

At some point in adulthood, though, I started to become very season-attentive and now I notice everything. It's August now, which means the summer leaves have themselves become part of the familiar landscape, fading into the background of consciousness. But as you get older times moves more quickly, and the one good thing about that is that no matter what time of year it is, I basically feel like spring will be here soon.

When I went to label this post I realized almost nothing was right, and then I selected "the extraterrestrial point of view." I think it's a good fit. If you came from a planet where there were animals and plants but the plants were all small or evergreen, and you came to earth and saw the whole deciduous tree situation, I think your reaction would be much like mine in this post: Oh my god, so many leaves!