Sounds like the Yvonne Tweten I know

Fall color lacking brilliance
By Dave Forster, The Forum

Yvonne Tweten couldn’t say enough about the burst of fall colors outside her home on Minnesota’s Spirit Lake. “It’s just gorgeous,” said Tweten, 78. “I’ve been coming here since I was born, and I don’t recall it ever being so beautiful.” That’s a far cry from Fargo, just 60 miles away. Though usually more subdued, the metro area’s fall colors are still giving a pretty poor showing this season, said Jim Walla, a forest pathologist at North Dakota State University.

Residents who remember the scenes from last fall will be doubly disappointed. The first heavy frost last year came in November, Walla said, allowing leaves to live well into the fall for a brighter explosion of color in the end. Walla said it was Fargo’s best display in the 28 years he’s been here. “Last year was just spectacular,” he said. Generally, bright fall colors can be attributed to a couple of organic changes, said Joe Zeleznik, an NDSU extension forester. When a tree shuts down its food-making process, the green chlorophyll pigment breaks down, exposing hidden yellow and orange colors. The purples and reds come from sugar storage in advance of winter, Zeleznik said. Explaining a given year’s color performance is an inexact science, but Walla attributed some of this year’s bust to foliage problems from insects and disease.For instance, apple scab badly hurt local crab apple trees, Walla said. The disease benefited earlier this year from the area’s heavy rains, he said.

Another theory getting tossed around in other parts of the country focuses on the insecticide used to spray mosquitoes, Walla said. The thinking is that the fumes kill off all of the insects on a tree, allowing the hardier – and leaf damaging – aphids and mites to return without their natural enemies, he said. But Walla said there’s still little research behind the theory, and he didn’t want to condemn mosquito spraying. Mark Boetel, an NDSU entomologist, was skeptical of the spraying theory. Several factors, including jet streams, affect aphid numbers, he said. Cass County Vector Control sprayed on 18 nights this past year in Fargo, said program director Angela Balint. Regardless of what’s dulled many of the branches this year, the local fall color scene isn’t a total loss. Sugar maples are showing brighter than ever, and the black walnuts are brilliantly yellow, Walla said. If that’s not enough, there’s always an hour drive into Minnesota to Tweten’s neighborhood – between Detroit Lakes and Maplewood State Park. She hoped the colors would hold on for this weekend.“It’s just fantastic,” she said. “If you could just swing out it would be wonderful.”