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Why do the leaves change color in the Fall?

Why do leaves change color in the fall?

  • Why exactly do they? Is it some sort of chemical change or something? LOL! I have always wondered why!

  • Answer:

    Leaves are nature's food factories. Plants take water from the ground through their roots. They take a gas called carbon dioxide from the air. Plants use sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into glucose. Glucose is a kind of sugar. Plants use glucose as food for energy and as a building block for growing. The way plants turn water and carbon dioxide into sugar is called photosynthesis. That means "putting together with light." A chemical called chlorophyll helps make photosynthesis happen. Chlorophyll is what gives plants their green color. During winter, there is not enough light or water for photosynthesis. The trees will rest, and live off the food they stored during the summer. They begin to shut down their food-making factories. The green chlorophyll disappears from the leaves. As the bright green fades away, we begin to see yellow and orange colors. Small amounts of these colors have been in the leaves all along. We just can't see them in the summer, because they are covered up by the green chlorophyll.

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well in the fall the tree stops providing for the leaves so it can save energy for the winter so the leaves stop making cloriphlie (which is green) so the real leaf colors apear... like red or orange or brown

Lola

Leaves have chlorophyll in them which gives them their green color, and in the fall the chlorophyll leaves the leaves.

William S brainbox

Chlorophyll, the substance that makes leaves green, drains from the leaf as the weather cools, as freezing kills the leaf and renders it useless to most trees. This is the substance that allows leaves to gather sunlight as energy. To find out more, look up the term "photosynthesis".

tachikomasensei

less sun = less chlorophyll = more xylophll = yellow/ red color

Brian

Leaves always have a range of pigments (Carotenoids are always present). During the spring and summer there is an excess of chlorophyll and it overpowers or masks the other pigments. When autumn approaches the veins of the leaf start being closed off by cork cells and this starts to deplete the amount of chlorophyll. Basically more chlorophyll is being used up than is being created. Carotenoids and Anthocyanins give the leaves their autumn colors. While Carotenoids are always present and usually give off a yellow, brown, or orange color. Anthoocyanins are produced in the late summer by the breakdown of sugars and usually give off a color something like red or purple.

Don't Be So Humble

Leaves have clorpphyl which IS a chemmical. ANd in the fall the leaves stop producing this chemical. Which makes the green go away. The red and brown was always there but the clorophil was covering it.

Lindsey C

because when it gets colder they dye.

Heather

it is God's way of showing us how beautiful death is and in the spring how beautiful life is.

y n

I think it;s becuase they aren't getting enough sun in order to produce chlorophlyl? and all that good green stuff. and then they just turn into reallly pretty colors and eventually fall off :]

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