Aside: The red color in maple leaves is the same pigment as the red color in many ripe fruits, and for the same reason. That pigment is derived from sugar, and so only forms when there’s a lot of sugar present. And of course, ripe fruit and maple sap are both very sweet.
We have lived in the suburbs in Houston, TX for almost two decades. We do not get fall colors here. The closest fall colors place is “Lost maples state park” which is like a 3 hour drive, one way. We have been there a few times. We have also been to Vancouver, Seattle, Lake Tahoe, Vermont, Shenandoah Valley, and Hot Springs, AR to see fall colors. You guys are lucky.
Many trees stay green all winter long like oaks, pines, cedars, magnolias, … Some trees like the Chinese Pistache tree does get colors even in the Houston climate but they are invasive.
So Cal here. We have a few parks around that give a decent display of fall colors but for the most part not much to see here.
Oaks and magnolias might stay green all year in Texas, but in more northerly climates, they turn brown and drop their leaves.
October is a huge tourist time in northern MN. People flock from all over the country and some other countries as well to take in the color. That said, most tourists just come from further south in the state simply because it’s beautiful. And perhaps because the bugs have died off and the hiking is good in cooler weather.
The evergreen status of trees in australia is ruined by the “flame tree”,Brachychiton acerifolius (and title of the Cold Chisel /Jimmy Barnes song as a link to its topic, failed relationships…presumably. ) But not as part of a winter survival tactic. it being a sub-rainforest tree… it changes each leaf into a red flower. Is it deciduous ? deciduous evolved for a different benefit.
I wouldn’t say that for all of Texas. Only Houston and suburbs.
Texas has 5 growing zones. Rio Grande valley is fully tropical and you can grow Coconuts, Mangoes and Avocadoes. Amarillo have temperature is in the negatives during winter.
https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/fallgarden/zones.html
Another Oregonian here. We get yellows but that’s about it. They do stand out among the evergreens, though.
I understand the red colors come from a chemical reaction that takes place if the temp gets down to just below freezing at night and then a warmish afternoon. In Oregon, we usually get a lot of rain in fall, which keeps the temperature too mild for that. I do remember a year (about 10-12 years ago) where we got about three weeks of October weather similar to that ideal. Except the lows were just above freezing rather than just below. Towards the end of that period, the trees did get a nice orange color but no reds.
I too am disappointed, I thought leaf peepers were perhaps going to be like a sort of leaf miner insect, but one that eventually finds its way to the edge of the leaf to peer out at the world
With over 125,000,000 hits on Google, I’m surprised this an unfamiliar term to several people.
Wikipedia says this tree drops the leaves just before flowering in cooler weather. Photos make me think that the flowers are smaller than the leaves. Either way, it’s a gorgeous tree. I’d love to see it.
I grew up in Southern California. The first I heard the term was age 30-something, a couple years after I’d married a former New Englander. I was quite surprised by the whole idea then.
Only a decade later did I live for the first time in my life in a place that had the traditional 4 seasons. An experience I hope never to repeat.
Lots of people are simply not from the world of cold and seasons. Most of us try hard to pretend such horrors do not in fact exist on this Good Earth. Only being semi-serious here, but winter denialism is a real thing.
This fall in northwestern MA the maples are the most spectacular I’ve seen them yet. It’s like the whole world has turned golden. I wander around in a kind of ecstasy. I’m from California and there is nothing comparable even in the Sierras. In fact I have never seen anything comparable anywhere else.
I’d never heard the term leaf peepers until I moved here.
I imagine it’s more familiar to people who live in a place where the term is used.
What struck me most about the linked reddit in the OP was the tourist hatred.
There can be a dynamic between locals and tourists that includes simultaneous dependence and hatred. My first spouse was a native of Southampton NY, where New York City people vacation. The local population to some degree depended on the tourist business, but things the tourists do, especially mistakes, draw especially vicious criticism. My father in law had a towing business, and tourists who would get their cars stuck on sandy beaches, or wreck their cars drinking, earned special hatred.
I often wonder about a parallel dynamic in which tourists crave to identify as locals, like it confers some kind of authenticity. Sure, it is good to avoid common tourist mistakes, especially those that put other people out. But many tourists try so hard to support the impression that they are not tourists, as if the very fact of having a tourist identity is the problem.
Well said.
I live in a tourist / seasonal resident area and one of the recurring jokes is “If it’s tourist / snowbird season, why can’t we shoot them?”
Like any other aspect of human nature, we all crave the upsides of <whatever> and wish the downsides would simply disappear. To the degree we can semi-plausibly pretend the downsides don’t exist at all, that’s especially attractive (c.f. global warming). I love all the half-empty restaurants running specials when the tourists are gone. I don’t much like it when the people are here and the restaurants are packed at full price. I realize intellectually that I can’t have the former without the latter. But emotional me sure wants that sweet former without that sour latter.
As a tourist, we feel like there’s a target painted on our back saying: “Exploit me!” Local predators, legal and illegal, are looking for easy marks and we’re obviously it. Because we don’t know the going price, the local haunts, etc. We’re forced to take the advice we can get as if it was true. Sometimes it is.
Story time:
Decades ago my wife & I took an Alaskan cruise. The ship pulled into Juneau, which despite being the state capital is really a pretty small town with only ~30K residents. The 4 docked ships that day added 6-8,000 people to the city’s downtown.
Wife & I were poking about in a tourist shop and one of the floor clerks said, “You’re locals, right?” It was an unexpected comment, as was my reaction of absolute unwarranted pride. My wife reported she’d had the same unbidden unconscious reaction. Despite not actually aspiring to be the rustic sort of people who’d actually be locals in Juneau. It was an interesting moment of self-discovery for both of us.
That reminds me, I’ll tell you where some leaf peepers come from: everywhere, via cruise ships. Looking at Bar Harbor (which is in lovely Acadia National Park on the coast of Maine, and which often has great fall foliage), in the early 90s they went out of their way to encourage cruise lines to come their way, which eventually made it a tourist mecca and a good port of entry for boats coming from Canada.
In the vein of being careful what you wish for, however, they now get around 90,000 cruise ship visitors in each of September and October, many of whom will be roaming the hills in tour buses (some interesting trivia: a 2,300-passenger ship usually charges extra for leaf-peeping tours, and typically uses 2 buses; a 500-passenger luxury tour, on the other hand, includes the tour price in the total cost, and typically uses 10 buses).
They’re now trying to take a step back, they being the Town Council and - I feel I have to go out of my way to mention his name - their Harbormaster, Chris Wharff. The last I saw, they had negotiated it down with the cruise lines to 65,000/month in September/October, with encouragement to also visit in non-leaf months. Which is still a lot of tourists.
Yeah, that’s a nice one. If I knew he were Notable, then he would be a candidate for Wikipedia’s list of aptronyms.
There’s 245,000,000 hits for Gym shoes, a term only commonly used in the Chicago and Cincinnati areas
(I only get 760,000 hits on Leaf Peepers via Google. Apparently Google is suppressing me)
((With quotes in the search, it’s 4.27mil for “Gym Shoes” and 216,000 for “Leaf Peepers”))
It’s a name with a lot of potential. The first time I saw it I looked up his police rank, and alas it was only Sergeant…I hope he gets a promotion someday.