quotations about leaves
We take it for granted that plants have green leaves for photosynthesis, but green vegetation may be a reflection of the solar spectrum on the Earth. Our sun is a G-class (yellow) star, which emits a peak spectrum in the visual range. Additionally, the Earth's atmosphere has a significant effect on the light reaching the ground, making it ideal for plants to absorb in blue or red. What if we discover a habitable planet around a different star? NASA and CalTech have already looked into this possibility. On a planet orbiting an F-class (yellow-white) star, which is somewhat hotter than the sun, photosynthesis will most likely concentrate on blue and green wavelengths, because that's where the energy peak will be. Leaves there will reflect mostly in yellow, orange, and red. It would be "fall" year-round, at least based on the coloration of Earth's vegetation.
STEVEN SPENCE
"Autumn Leaves: Last, Loveliest Smile", Got Science, October 27, 2015
A tangerine and russet cascade of kaleidoscopic leaves, creates a tapestry of autumn magic upon the emerald carpet of fading summer.
JUDITH A. LINDBERG
The Organic View
As seasons unravel ... I muse that, even though the tree has lost its leaves, it may be haunted by the memory of their warmth.
JADE CUTTLE
"A plate of poetry, please: Leaves and lovers", Varsity Online, May 23, 2016
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
EMILY BRONTË
"Fall, Leaves, Fall"
O bring me a leaf from the Old Forest,
A token so sacred, O bring;
'Twill recall those bright scenes to remembrance,
Old friendships around it will cling.
JOHN D. COSSAR
"A Leaf From the Old Forest"
A gust of wind rattles the window, and I look out. Leaves are whooshing all over the place, flying past horizontally as if they have engines of their own.
KATE MESSNER
The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z.
Happy, happy, happy for all that God hath done,
Glad of all the little leaves dancing in the sun.
ALFRED NOYES
Drake: An English Epic
In the whisper of the leaves appears an interchange of love.
WILLIAM JONES
attributed, Day's Collacon
So bright in death I used to say,
So beautiful through frost and cold!
A lovelier thing I know to-day,
The leaf is growing old,
And wears in grace of duty done,
The gold and scarlet of the sun.
MARGARET ELIZABETH SANGSTER
"A Maple Leaf"
The woods are hush'd, their music is no more;
The leaf is dead, the yearning past away;
New leaf, new life--the days of frost are o'er;
New life, new love, to suit the newer day:
New loves are sweet as those that went before:
Free love--free field--we love but while we may.
ALFRED TENNYSON
Idylls of the King
And the wind is rising squally and loud
With many a stormy token--
Playing a wild funereal air,
Through the branches bleak, bereaved, and bare,
To the dead leaves dancing here and there.
THOMAS HOOD
"The Forge", Poems of Wit and Humour
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Woods in Winter"
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.
EMILY DICKINSON
"Indian Summer"
Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves,
O flakes of snow,
For which, through naked trees, the winds
A-mourning go?
JOHN BANISTER TABB
"Phantoms", Poems
Do you know why the leaves change colour?... Before a tree sheds a leaf it pumps it full of all the poison it can't rid itself of otherwise. That red there--that's a man's skin blotching with burst veins after an assassin spikes his last meal with roto-weed. The poison spreading through him before he dies.
MARK LAWRENCE
Emperor of Thorns
The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood"
One skeleton-leaf, white-ribbed, a last year's leaf,
Skipped in a paltry gust, whizzed from the dust,
Leapt the small dusty puddle; and sailing then
Merrily in the sunlight, lodged itself
Between two blossoms in a hawthorn tree.
That was the moment: and the world was changed.
With that insane gay skeleton of a leaf
A world of dead worlds flew to hawthorn trees,
Lodged in the green forks, rattled, rattled their ribs
(As loudly as a dead leaf's ribs can rattle)
Blithely, among bees and blossoms. I cursed,
I shook my stick, dislodged it. To what end?
Its ribs, and all the ribs of all dead worlds,
Would house them now forever as death should:
Cheek by jowl with May.
CONRAD AIKEN
"Dead Leaf in May"
The rustling of the leaves is like a low hymn to nature.
JAMES ELLIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves.
JOHN UPDIKE
A Child's Calendar
The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
"The Seasons", Pages from An Old Volume: A Collection of Essays