Autumn Leaves
By J. D. U. WARD
ICH autumn's golden quittance "; Robert Bridges' figure of speech was apt to the occasion, for this is a time of quitting, and the revelation of golds and reds in the leaves are, of course, a sign that the fall is at hand ; indeed, many of the colours are not at their best until November, immediately before the stripping. Yet some of the poplars and a few branches of the elms always show tints of gold before September is gone. The new colours, which we admire as an accession, are most of them present in the leaves all the time ; they become evident now because of a recession—the recession of the strong green of life. ti Those of us who specially love the hues of autumn tend at this season to watch the weather more closely and to hope that there will be neither high winds nor heavy rains. If the dying leaves are to have a long Indian summer in which to be beautiful and almost useless they want calm days and cool nights, without sharp frosts. In too many years certain trees leave with us no final flare of beauty because a very little wind, rain or frost will make their leaves flutter down, once they have ceased to work. The ash and the maidenhair or gingko (the word is said to come from the Chinese for " silver apricot ") are trees whose riches of pure pale gold will shine for days if the weather is kind, but in some Octobers they are allowed to pay only the most meagre, shabby quittance ; the leaves are torn or frozen from their summer place before the autumnal gold has shown.
Trees of a more fiery colour, where a change from starch to sugar gives more red than gold, seem to be of rather tougher character ; horse-chestnuts, admittedly, may lose their large and vulnerable leaves all too readily, but beeches and certain maples and thorns and sorbs (the rowan, or mountain ash, and its more splendid near-relations) are not so easily bullied, into dropping their riches before the long sleep of winter, nor are the ,larches very quickly stripped—which is well, since the ,gold of larches looks specially well among the dark green of spruce or Douglas firs. There are, too, resistant individual trees of several species: for example, the taxodium, or so-called swamp cypress, which will sometimes retain its bright rust-red till Christmas. And we all know how beech and horhbeam hedges and dwarf oak trees will hold their foliage (" brown skeletons of leaves that lag my forest-brook along ") till the springtime swelling of buds takes effect.
Very many of us consciously enjoy our autumn colours and recall the allusions, factual and figurative, of poets great and small.
. . . when yellow leaves, or none, or few . . .
. . . the last red leaf is whirl'd away . . .
. . . like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes . . .
. . . the Leaves of Life keep falling one by one . . .
. . . November's leaf is red and sere. . . .
But some have another approach, and they show more interest when the leaves have been brought to ground—which in England may mean the beginning of covert-shooting and " serious " fox- hunting.
In certain Continental countries the weeks immediately pre- ceding the fall of the leaves are the favourite season for the removal of " forest litter "—which means chiefly leaves—for use as manure or fertiliser. Foresters hold that the carpet can best (or least ill) be spared from the floor of the forest at this time. just before there is to be another descent of leaves and before (they hope) the winter rains begin. The litter is-a natural pro- tector of the soil and a retainer and distributor of moisture: the forest guardians, jealous about the trees being robbed of their proper manure and ground cover, insist that the floor must not be left long without protection. Wherefore there are usually regulations about the collecting of litter ; only wooden rakes must be used, because steel would damage the superficial roots of the trees ; in this forest the leaves may be taken once in every three years from the same place, and in that only once in every ten. Some peasants like to take dry litter (and not merely sufficient dry beech leaves to stuff their mattresses afresh), but foresters may object that wherever the litter is dry there it is most needed by the forest to perform its function of conserving moisture in the soil. It is because of her special generosity in giving nutriment and protection that beech is called the mother of the forest."
Yet circumstances alter cases. " There are many woods in Britain where a well-regulated removal would be beneficial," wrote W. E. Hiley in a standard book on sylviculture. The reason is that in many of our badly-constituted and worse managed plantations the leaves form a mat which is not decom- posing as it should do. The needles in pure larch and pure spruce plantations are probably the worst mat-makers, but a pure beech-leaf mat is not uncommon : keen gardeners seeking per- mission to take beech leaves from neighbouring woods might quote Mr. Hiley's words in " The Improvement of Woodlands ": In pure beech woods the litter may become so thick that the lower layers of leaves seem to be unable to rot owing to the blanket of more recent leaves which presses them down." And they might also remember that various leaves other than the favourite beech make a rich dressing for a garden: poplar, birch and the despised elder are all first-class. In spite of the current enthusiasm for composting we still waste great quantities of leaves in this country ; too many leaves contribute to the blue smoke of autumn bonfires. And on high- ways and in public parks we may observe the fantastic Heath Robinson operation of leaf-sweeping by hand : years ago the Americans were using vacuum machines to suck up the leaves, which were then minced and discharged on the flower beds. It is not only in leaf-colour and normal October weather that America has an advantage over us. Autumn leaves have their beauty and their uses, and " autumn " itself is a good word, even if its parentage be dubious. Yet one could wish that autumn had not in this country so thoroughly ousted " Fall," a word which seems to salute the way of the leaves and their supreme importance in the scenery off; the declining year.
Previous page
