Nell Greenfield Boyce

Like aphids, they avoid red leaves.

So there was this one study where Marco looked at apple trees and found that those with red leaves had fewer aphids on them than the trees with green or yellow leaves.

That's wild.

He's got some evidence that aphids actually have a worse survival rate on red trees compared to aphids on yellow or green ones.

I mean, there has not been a huge amount of experimental work on this, but he told me if you ask him why some leaves go red.

True.

I mean, out west.

I mean, worldwide, it's a minority of trees that go red.

I was just talking to Nikki Hughes, and she told me there's just this dearth of research in general.

Like other than tourism, like what's the application here?

It's not like it's important for agriculture or something, you know.

But I mean, she does notice lots of different interesting things.

Like there are some species that can go one way or another.

Right.

It's not always yellow.

It's not always red.

And, you know, she notices this a lot in parking lots.

With her students, she's actually done like parking lot science.

Like she actually was looking at different colored willow oaks outside a home goods store, for example.

I mean, it's a very convenient field site.