Aching for fall foliage? Open those peepers
Is it just me, or are the fall colors simply spectacular this year?
No, not in New England, silly. Right here. In San Jose.
Yes, fall colors, as in trees with leaves. Even after Thursday’s bluster.
Sure, I considered that it might be my imagination. Some unconscious yearning for the Midwest of my youth. Brisk air. Burning leaves. Followed immediately by 40 feet of snow.
So, I sought professional help.
‘‘ This year in particular,’’ says Christian Bonner, a San Jose-based arborist. ‘‘ I’ve noticed that it is a particularly bright year.’’
Maybe he’s humoring me. See, he also says last year was particularly bright.
Last year? I didn’t even notice.
And that’s the problem.
We don’t think of San Jose as leafpeeping country. We’re busy here. There is software to code, money to be made, real estate to be flipped and kids to raise. Maybe we don’t have time to be wandering around like loons looking at leaves.
I say reconsider. Be a loon. Wander.
The scene: I’m standing with Bonner on the edge of St. James Park with his boss, Rhonda Berry, who founded the non- profit Our City Forest. ( They’re big on trees.) The arborist is standing under amagnificent zelkova tree that I never would have noticed if an arborist weren’t standing under it.
Its rusty- red and yellow leaves are twisting and breaking away, raining down on us as Bonner explains that fall colors are what you make of them.
OK, we’re no Vermont when it comes to brilliant reds, oranges and yellows as far as the eye can see. We’re California. A little more mellow. We take things in stride. It’s all about subtlety.
And growing conditions.
‘‘ There are a lot of really bright red trees we could plant,’’ Bonner says, ‘‘ but they don’t fall under the drought- tolerant category.’’
So they’d need to be watered. A lot.
‘‘ The thing a lot of people don’t realize is, this is like a semi- desert.’’
So we make do — and not half- badly. We’ve got plenty of brilliant trees strutting their colors, or anthocyanin and carotenoid pigments, if you’re an arborist, and Bonner is.
He explains what most of us learned in school. Cold temperatures send the trees into dormancy, cutting off the greenmaking chlorophyll and leaving only the latent leaf colors.
The trees sleep, it seems, so we can dream. Or marvel. Marvel at liquidambar, Chinese pistache or mulberries, gingkos and broadleaf maples.
Sure, you have to look beyond the green of the pines and palms. Think of it as seeing past the forest to the trees.
The scene: Naglee Park, just off San Fernando Street near San Jose State University. Bonner points to a front- yard raywood ash, its leaves a medley of green, red and yellow. He spots another deciduous delight next door and one down the street.
Anyone can find the brilliance, he says, if you know where to look. San Jose State’s campus is typically loaded with trees in fall fashion. The neighborhood surrounding Monroe and Hedding streets is a leafy gold mine. You’d figure as much, with streets named Peach Tree, Walnut Grove, Boxwood and Red Bush.
Berry says the parking lot surrounding the eBay campus at Bascom and Hamilton avenues is great for leaf- peeping. Which sounds a little depressing.
A parking lot?
Yes. The place is exploding with reds, yellows and almost purples. And, of course, cars.
But Berry, whose group promotes urban tree- planting, says there’s nothing like the beauty of trees in the heart of the city. ‘‘ It’s right here under our noses,’’ she says.
All we have to do is look.