Fall foliage slow to show this year

By KALEA HALL

khall@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Crunch ... crunch ... crunch.

You might hear the sound of leaves crunching beneath your feet as you walk around Lake Glacier in Mill Creek MetroParks, but those leaves may not reflect the colorful brilliance you are used to this time of year – at least not yet.

Not to worry, the colors will be here soon enough.

“I still think we are going to have a pretty good fall color season, but I think it will be late,” said Casey Burdick, fall color forester for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. “I expect Northern Ohio to peak around the second week of October.”

By then, Mill Creek visitors who need their fill of fall color hopefully will be able to take in the orange, yellow and red colors that reflect off Lake Glacier.

“We end up with a lot of people in the park taking pictures,” said Carol Vigorito, recreation and education director at Mill Creek and a 15-year naturalist.

Leaves make the perfect backdrop for a fall photo after the science of their colorful change starts with the change of the weather.

Leaves are the food factory for trees by using sunlight in a process called photosynthesis. The leaves have chlorophyll, which absorbs the sun’s rays and turns them into chemical energy.

“The leaves changing color is a result of them shutting down the food factory and going to sleep,” Vigorito said.

The green color soon fades away and reveals a new fall color that awes its admirers.

“Those [colors] are there all the time in those leaves,” Vigorito said. “They are just masked by the chlorophyll.”

The colors that come out depend on the tree and other factors. Hickory trees, for example, have yellow leaves. Sometimes, sugar gets trapped in certain leaves on the tree, and that results in a red color.

“We have yet to see the bright yellows and oranges,” Vigorito said. “If you scan across Lake Glacier, you will see touches of yellow.”

Vigorito also expects the colors to hit their peak in mid-October. The time of the change is connected to the weather. The hot and dry summer Ohio had is what caused this color delay, Burdick said.

“Hopefully, we will get a week or two out of the color in each region,” Burdick said.

When the color does come, Ohio has more than 100 varieties of trees and shrubs that make its display striking.

Mill Creek has some of the variety including maple trees, hickory, beech, cottonwood, aspen and dogwood.

“It just depends on where you are in the park as to what trees you will see and different trees turn different colors,” Vigorito said.

For Ohio’s fall foliage reports and fall events go to: fallcolor.ohiodnr.gov/.