Nell Greenfield Boyce
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Nitrogen is really precious to a plant.
It's needed for everything from photosynthesis to making proteins and DNA.
And so, you know, the tree is going dormant kind of in winter, but it doesn't want to lose that nitrogen.
It wants to hang on to it.
So the chlorophyll gets busted up.
The green is going away.
And this exposes yellow.
Right.
OK.
And scientists agree on that.
The yellow is there.
It gets exposed.
The red is this completely different thing.
Oh, because the red is actually made brand new in the fall.
Like, Nikki picked up this one maple leaf, which was this kind of mottled red on yellow.
Why does the tree bother to make this red?
Especially since the leaf is about to fall and die anyway.
Why go through this?
Exactly.
Like within days, the leaf is doomed.