Ask Tim: Why are leaves still on the trees? | Tim Woodward's Columns | Idaho Statesman
Q: Some of the leaves haven’t fallen off the trees yet. Why is that? They’re usually long gone by now.
VICKI G., Boise
A: The culprit, once again, is the strange weather we’ve been having this year.
Remember the so-called-spring that was so wet and cold it kept sycamore trees from sprouting leaves? The freak windstorm in August that toppled trees throughout the valley? The early and unusually heavy snows this month?
An unusually early cold snap this fall is what kept leaves on many of our trees. It froze their “abscission layers.”
No, I’d never heard of them, either.
Abscission layers are made of cells at the base of leaf stems. The cells grow rapidly as winter approaches, pushing off the leaves and protecting the tree by closing the hole where the stem separates.
“This year we had a big freeze unusually early,” Boise City Forestry Specialist Debbie Cook said. “It froze abscission layers before they could finish doing their job so the leaves stayed put.”
If you’re wondering when the leaves will get around to falling and what you can do with them when they do, you have lots of company
“Everybody’s trapped in the same situation,” Cook said. “What the heck are we going to do with all these leaves?”
The problem has been compounded by early snowstorms, which buried leaves that had managed to fall before some homeowners were able to rake them up.
Leaves still on some varieties of trees should fall in the next couple of weeks, Cook said. Others will stay attached until spring, when new buds will push them off.
Got leaves at your house? You can leave them in paper recycling bags to be picked up with your Christmas tree between Dec. 27 and Jan. 7.
Before then, they can be left in trash bins with overflow stickers. Barring more freakish weather — we haven’t had a hurricane yet — they’ll be picked up on your regular collection day.
Send questions to asktim@ idahostatesman.com or Ask Tim, The Idaho Statesman, P.O. Box 40, Boise, ID 83707.
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