Day 341 - Awesome Autumn / Fabulous Fall

Seasonal Showcase for Awesome Autumn -
I see this out of my bedroom window

Hey everyone today's Day 341 and I am going back to a long time ago where I covered Spring and what I found then. Well, as it's quite a little way into Autumn, I thought I would do another 'Season Showcase'. It's probably my favourite Season as after the madness and heat of the Summer you get the calmness, mists and amazing colours of Autumn.

So, I thought I would explain a lot of the science and also just about what happens in Autumn anyway.

Sloes look amazing in the sunlight

Harvest:

In England at least, something called Harvest happens. Autumn is the time where most of the crops in England are harvested. But what does this mean for nature? Well, there are some perks for them such as some birds pick up any grains that are spilt and some animals like to eat on the actual stem, not the heads. But on the other side, it is really bad for a lot of other birds, if they have nests for example in them, the tractors will completely obliterate them. Also, there is way more wildlife that eats the crops and the seeds than the stems.

And lovely against Autumn flowers

Fruits:

Well, just adding to the Harvest, Fruits. Now, when I say fruits, I mean berries, such as Blackberries and Rose Hips, even Elderberries. These are technically part of the Harvest. They only seem to grow in Autumn. Well, I've always wondered why, I can't find anything on-line but I think it's just evolution.

Fly Agaric mushrooms are
very colourfull

Trees and shrubs spend the spring and summer gathering energy from the sun and nutrients from the ground and produce lovely seeds wrapped in nice food. Then birds and other wildlife which needs to have the food otherwise it won't survive the winter comes and eats it. Think about them as a walk-in Greengrocers. :-) The plant gets a benefit as the animals take away the seed and distribute it in a nice little package of fertiliser!




Fungi:

And clusters of little mushrooms
are pretty too

Coming out of Fruits and into something that you wouldn't really think of as a Fruit. Yes, Fungi. They are technically the fruiting bodies of the Fungi which is found under the ground. You can see the all-year-round but they are found mostly in the Autumn, this is something that completely deludes me as there isn't really anything that would want to feed on a possibly-poisonous-food. It could just be as it's the best time to come up for sunlight as most of the sky-space is free.

And a creeper at Thirsk

Leaves:

Well, since as it leads into it, I'll do Leaves to end off this post. They are probably the most scientific parts of nature that I know of, and know... But anyway, the science is basically how and why they change colour.

Well, it's because of the Chlorophyll that is found in only plant cells that is vital to photosynthesis. That is what makes them Green. Now, what I have been told is that in the Autumn, trees and plants actually know that days are shortening and the sun isn't so intense so they won't be able to photosynthesise very well as there will be hardly any sun for them to absorb. So they start to break down the Chlorophyll and store it in the tree ready for the next year. as they do this other pigments in the leaves show through giving us the lovely colours we see.

A tree changing colour at Silton

There aren't really any links as this is mostly from my head. :-)



Hope you enjoyed,

The sunsets are pretty awesome too

Z.