Push

(and more at rickzworld)

I now propose a new name for that latter season of each year that we have for so long unwittingly called ‘Fall’. I propose that we begin referring to it as ‘Push’.

The reason — as you’ll soon see — is quite simple. Fall has been known for so long as Fall perhaps in part because temperatures continue to fall throughout that stretch of the calendar. But it is much more likely that the name Fall stuck because so many leaves appear to fall from so many trees all around us as Halloween nears.

Yes, that’s correct, I said ‘appear to fall’, because in fact every single one of those falling leaves is actually Pushed.

As temperatures descend and the amount of daily sunlight diminishes, leafed trees realize that their season of making hay — photosynthesizing, making fruit, sprouting acorns, producing berries, extending branchlets, adding a new layer of cambium, etc. — will soon come to an end. They shut down all their growth factories and lay off all their chlorophyll. Without that dominant green coloration, other pigments are at last allowed to shine through: yellow xanthophylls, orange carotene, purple-red anthocyanin and brown tannin. As a result, we see the vivid foliage of autumn.

Then the big Push begins. The special abscission layer of cells at the base of each leaf stem begins to swell into a corky seal, and ‘POP! — POP! — POP!’ the no-longer-useful leaves are Pushed one by one off into the void.