Fri 14 Nov 2008
Why are the colors of the leaves in New England considered more beautiful than the ones elsewhere? It’s not like Massachusetts has a monopoly on deciduous trees. Whence?
Posted by Josh Millard7 answers so far!
Okay, let's hear it.
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I don’t know about Portland, but up here in the Seattle area, unless we have a nice dry autumn leaves are generally a drab yellow or brown when they turn, exotic species excepted. This year we got pretty nice color but in New England the palette is much broader and spectacular. Bill Bryson wrote about the scientific reasons why in one of his books, but I’m too lazy to find it.
Why are the colors of the leaves in New England considered more beautiful than the ones elsewhere?
You are mistaken, they do not. The leaves in Quebec re similar but better.
So Quebec is the deciduous New England of Cananda?
Foolish of me not to break out the internationalizing addendum, I guess. Feel free to extrapolate as necessary.
I might guess that the colors aren’t necessarily better, but they do have the right mix of tree density, population close enough by to make it a destination, good PR, and small, quaint photogenic towns. I don’t know about states like Ohio or Indiana but Iowa has nice colors, just not very many trees (relatively speaking). Minnesota has great colors but they don’t last very long. Also, we’re more spread out than New England without the large number of urban dwellers who might “miss” the fall colors. I imagine NE gets a lot of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. visitors.
It might be the proximity to national media. With more people in the region, and of those people, more working in media, they have a bigger megaphone to advertise how awesome their leaves are.
Everything is better on the East Coast.
It’s the red trees. You need the red trees to spice it up, otherwise it’s just shades of brown.