From Green to Red

As someone who likes asking why, I might have expected by now to get reliable answers to questions based on elementary observations of the natural world. Sometimes I do. Sometimes it's a 'probably' and sometimes there's just a number of theories, none of which achieves consensus. That doesn't bother me too much. It's oddly satisfying to think that there are some things we still don't know. Curiosity should always have more things to exercise itself on. One problem with Google is it gives instant satisfaction and that fails to nourish the mature pleasure of deferred gratification. Our brains are the better, or so they say, for having problems to mull over.

So the way that leaves on Blacka turn red even well before autumn remains a puzzle that nobody has yet explained  - to my satisfaction at least. Well, it's sort of known how it happens but why is less certain. One likely story is that the plant halts the chlorophyl process early, stores the nutrition in leaves at a point when it's made a reasonable return - like someone cannily banking a proportion of their winnings.

It's enough for now just to enjoy the phenomenon. Bilberry is a good study because reds and greens are crucial to its cycle the aim of which is to produce the valued purple fruit. The patches of red can be as startling as a gunshot wound.

Oddly this is the time for harvesting of the berries yet more red flowers are still appearing ready to give us more fruits well into the last months of the year. The summer expeditions are now at their peak.

Once it was Sheffield people coming up on the buses laden with containers often glass jam jars. Now they come along by private car with tupperware. But the real intrepid bilberryers are the wild birds and mammals. Thrushes evidently read their health and diet advice in magazines and supplements and come along in organized parties bent on an antioxidant binge. I counted 28 in one group this morning and decided they must be mistles; when I got closer all of those heading for the woods in alarm were actually blackbirds. Pigeons as well of course, capable of eating so much they can be too heavy to get off the ground.

The reddening on bilberry looks standard practice but the mountain cranberry is different. The red leaves look like mutations.

But plenty of red berries are around, another shrub that carries on fruiting from now to near the end of the year.

Even bramble produces occasional vivid reds something of a mystery as the green bramble leaves stay around all winter, something that red deer value highly.