Perhaps the current season should be renamed — to push.
Leaves don’t fall off trees, according to an article on NPR’s Web site, they are pushed. No, seriously.
According to the article, these colder, shorter days trigger a hormone in the trees that sends a chemical message to every leaf to tell it that it’s time to go.
Once the message is received, says (Peter Raven, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden and a renowned botanist), little cells appear at the place where the leaf stem meets the branch. They are called “abscission” cells. They have the same root as the word scissors, meaning they are designed, like scissors, to make a cut.
And then, within a short time, the leaf develops a “thin bumpy line of cells that push the leaf, bit by bit, away from the stem.”
To read the full fascinating article and see a photo of the cells in action, please click here.
Pushed? I think not, the tree asks the leaves to, well, leave. It would be impolite for a tree, after months of living with said leaves, to agressively shove them off. Nonsense, simply nonsense. The soul of a tree is a kind one, and to claim that it pushes the leaves off and is cruel to thousands of equally kind souls is as rediculious as saying a blade of grass would push of a dew drop on a spring morning.