Who needs to travel to the Smokies or the Blue Ridge to see and enjoy autumn colors? We have had our own spectacular color show right in Anniston, Alabama.

Each year our deciduous trees put on their autumnal finery when the summer’s production of green chlorophyll slows allowing the leaves’ other colors show through, but occasional all the variables that affect color come together to take your breath away. Such was the case on Choccolocca this year.

“I don't know for sure why the colors are so beautiful this year,” says Dan Spaulding, Curator of Collections at the Anniston Museum of Natural History. “It is probably a combination of factors. Obviously something went well to get such a beautiful fall.”

“As summer begins to fade into shorter days and chillier nights in autumn, the plants start to go through internal biochemical changes that give us fall color,” explains Spaulding. “First a tree (shrub, or woody vine), cuts off its leaves' supply of nutrients. This turns off the ability of the plant to produce chlorophyll which masks the other pigments. So as the chlorophyll fades the other pigments now appear (but they were always there).

“The colors usually appear first at higher elevations, also they develop faster where the sun shines the brightest, like south facing slopes. The reds, yellows, and oranges are intensified with a lot of sunshine. Rain, on the other hand, will tend to dull the colors. Of course wind can blow leaves off plants prematurely, before they have had time to develop their full colors. A hard frost will bring the brilliant show to an end by turning the leaves brown. The beautiful array of fall colors in our deciduous woodlands does not seem to have any biological value or function. It appears to be only the byproduct of autumn metabolism of the forest plants. How ironic, we find beauty in the death of leaves!”