Here is a great job for the right plant physiologist.

Three ginkgo stories coming this weekend at Our Trees.

Now that October has arrived, autumn colors are really beginning to pop. Here is an overview of the stories about autumn that we have posted on Our Trees to inform your trips into the woods. Enjoy the colors!

A fantastic job for the right person!

We told the 500 year story of the violin at Our Trees, but it was a larger story: we are overwhelmed in an economy of constant changes to “improve” our gadgets and devices. Does this constant churn of technology really benefit us? Perhaps the violin provides a better path to guide our technology.

We are going backward in the US, so it is exciting to see other countries moving forward. This is not just about rights for trans folks, but about human rights for all of us.

We have published a number of stories about autumn colors at Our Trees in recent weeks. Here is an omnibus collection of all the stories. We will continue adding to these stories and this collection as autumn progresses. Have a look and subscribe to see future stories.

Our Sunday Trees feature tells the story of maple and spruce and the making of a machine that needs no improvement.

Finding Your Own Autumn Autumn colors are rapidly developing in much of North America and elsewhere. Making autumn personal will greatly deepen your experience with trees. Here is how.

Happy Birthday to Stephen Hales, born on this day in 1677. He was a parish priest in Teddington, England, but found time to do important experiments on fluid flow in plants and animals. He is the founder of plant physiology, my discipline. Have a look at this story at Our Trees.

Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, is the tree that most represents the glory of autumn. It displays more colors in a single tree than any other in our flora. Have a look at these colors at Our Trees. Can you think of a tree with such a diversity of colors in a single tree?

To all who rave about the Autumn colors of the north woods, I present to you the far more interesting colors of the southern Appalachians. But you have to get out of your car.

Please watch this video that Dr. Beckman has shared. With all the nonsense and distortions about what scientists do, it is important to learn about the passion the drives our work.

Here is a great job at Rice for the right person.

The fortune in my cookie today says "You have the ability to excel in novel areas." This is obviously nonsense: I only write nonfiction, like this, and another book to come.

Here is a leaf of flowering dogwood with bright red leaf cells, nearly dead, but veins of yellow and green, still functioning to export nitrogen and magnesium products made from the breakdown of chlorophyll. Read more at Our Trees, where you can also comment or ask questions about autumn colors.

At Our Trees, we continue our discussion of autumn colors in trees, and encourage you to get outside and look closely at your trees. You can learn a great deal about their lives. The comments section at of this story at Our Trees is open to you for questions about autumn colors.

This Wednesday, September 10, Our Trees will feature an explanation of the science of autumn colors. Meanwhile, the administration and Republican party are working to destroy the capabilities of science in the US and a over the world. Read about it here and help reverse this disastrous decline.

Sunday Trees is a new feature of Our Trees. This week, we begin with Tree Beer. It's free to read.

Trees are beginning to show their colors, but just as dramatic are our oldfields, producing shades of gold to delight our senses. Follow our Autumn color adventures at Our Trees. ourtrees.substack.com/p/autumn-col...

One of our most spectacular trees in autumn is baldcypress, with its glorious deep orange color in late fall. Baldcypress is not only interesting as a deciduous conifer, but also as our eastern redwood and as the longest-lived of all trees in the east. Enjoy the story at Our Trees.

Conifers are often described as "evergreen." They do in fact drop their needles and grow new ones. See the explanation at Our Trees.

Following up on yesterday's Autumn Colors prediction. We are having an unusual year with a pronounced cooling trend in the midwest and drought in New England. Read about it at Our Trees; your comments there are welcome. Thank you to @greenmtgirl.bsky.social for her comments.

Here is my annual prediction of autumn colors in the eastern deciduous forest. Find out whether they will be bright or dull, and subscribe to Our Trees for updates over the season.

Here is a line of willow oaks (Quercus phellos) in the middle of autumn. Notice the variation in color among the trees. At Our Trees we are following the autumn changes of trees. Join us as we explore the complex behavior of trees.

I wish I could be in upstate South Carolina today for the Blue Oak Pawpaw Festival. Don't you? www.blueoakhortsc.com/scpawpawfest

Connecting fully with nature may require us to leave our phones off and in our pockets. Read about it at Our Trees.

Tree growth is complicated, and does not happen as most of us think. Read about shoot growth at Our Trees.

Have you noticed that the scent of trees and forests are shifting as they shift into autumn? Read more at Our Trees.

With the arrival of cool weather, we see early signs of the autumn transition of leaves. It's especially noticeable around accumulated wounds of summer, with yellow patches expanding around old wounds, and yellow to red spots beginning to show in other areas. Chinkapin oak, Quercus muehlenbergii.

Why do we use Latin names to discuss plants. Here is a short story that should give us good reason to use them, from Our Trees

One of our most beautiful native trees is Franklinia, Franklinia alatamaha. First seen on the Altamaha River in what is now Georgia in 1765 and transplanted to the northeastern US, it is now extinct in the wild. Read the amazing story of this tree at Our Trees.

Where I live, only a mile or so from the largest peanut butter factory in the world, the morning air is often redolent with the smell of roasting peanuts. Here is a short story at Our Trees about the importance of our sense of smell in understanding the natural world. Enjoy!

Last night's Sturgeon Moon reminded me of how much I enjoy photographing trees in the moonlight. Here are a few you might enjoy. In two of them, I apply light painting, using a flashlight to bring out details on the stem. In others, I take advantage of city lights in addition to the moon. Enjoy!

It’s a fine day to make sumac tea, or just to enjoy our beautiful sumacs. More at Our Trees.

Here is a small sample of Nashville's amazing, huge trees. This ecosystem shares a lot, including the same species, with the Bluegrass woodland pasture ecosystem. Enjoy!

Climate change is altering tree growth, with wet summers causing abnormal late season growth. Read about it at Our Trees.

Pencils are wonderful writing tools. After a long dominance of the pencil industry by one tree, eastern redcedar, there has been a long absence of these pencils from the market. It is, though, the best wood for pencils. Read about redcedar and the return of cedar pencils at Our Trees.

Look at some tree leaves on your walks. They look terrible - blotched, wounded, discolored. Leaves cannot repair themselves and begin to deteriorate surprisingly early. Read more at Our Trees.

Tree sex is complicated. Trees can't wander into each others bedroom, so they have developed sophisticated systems using surrogates, like animals. Here is an illustrative story about sex in a single persimmon tree.

One of the most spectacular trees in the southern US is persimmon, Diospyros virginiana. It has alligator-hide layered bark, delicious fruit, and hard, dark wood related to ebony. Have a look at Our Trees. (We'll have a story about persimmon sex in a few days.)

Dead and dying trees are fascinating, and a very important component of forests and woodlands. When possible, they should be left for their contributions to those ecosystems as they decay. Read about it at Our Trees.

I have learned a great deal from venerable trees like this chinkapin oak. Notice the dead branches and thin crown. This is not, as conventional thought tells us, a sign of decline. Instead, it is a demonstration of crown readjustment in a healthy old tree. See more at Our Trees.

The McDonalds Tree changed the fate of ancient trees in the Bluegrass. Read about it at Our Trees.

Trees, the longest-lived and largest organisms on the planet, have the ability to rebuild their entire crown after damage. Trees maintain enormous populations of stem cells just below the bark, which quickly produce new branches to create a new crown. We describe the process in this old bur oak.

As promised, here is the first of three stories at Our Trees that will help us understand why trees are the largest, longest-lived organisms on Earth. And why they are also the most interesting.

Tomorrow at Our Trees, we begin a series of stories about what makes the biology of trees unique. And it’s probably not stories you have heard. Have a look at this preview.

I'd like you to meet Pando, a clone of quaking aspen that is the largest organism on our planet, and is in some trouble due to deer infestation. Details at Our Trees.

Here is the oldest known painting of a tree. Find out more at Our Trees.

David López Ibáñez, a member of the Philharmonia Orchestra, had his violin stolen from him in a pub one night. The thief has been arrested, but the violin, made in 1740, has not yet been recovered. A violin and its player often have deep emotional connections. Read more at Our Trees.