Ceinwen Smith is a biologist from South Africa who completed our Foundation Course in Goethean Science in July 2022. She returned to The Nature Institute in 2023 for a research project and this essay describes some of her experience.

The invitation to pay attention to color opens a window, brings a particular lens into focus and shapes the way an object, a process, or a landscape is experienced and thus how it is perceived. I have often wondered what it would be like to experience the world without color. What details would be seen and what would remain unseen? Observing the transition into spring and early summer may give some insight into the experience of how color has this ability to reveal, and to conceal, aspects of what is being observed. Here I share an account of my observations and explorations of the emergence of spring colors in maple and oak trees, which formed part of a recent three-month research fellowship at The Nature Institute.

In early spring, I arrived in a landscape I thought I knew and yet felt I was seeing it for the first time. Stripped of color and lacking contrast in the overcast light, the wooded hillsides held a quiet permeability, allowing my gaze an unobstructed view through clusters of gray trunks and interwoven branches that extended deep into the forest. My experience of distance across the landscape, between objects within the landscape and my proximity to them felt stretched and distorted in this canvas of gray and muted tones. I felt unsettled and restless, my eyes hungrily scanning for signs of color. While shape, form, and subtle movement were more visible, more striking in this muted forest landscape, individual trees appeared indistinguishable from each other.

My other senses, searching for familiar stimuli in the quiet and cold, felt deafened by the crunch of dry leaves underfoot, and burned by the crisp air in my nostrils. Not much moved in the cold, though the few birds I noticed appeared to share my sensory unease — noisily flitting about, appearing restless and hesitant to linger.

Light, Color, and Change

While the physical effect of a leafless landscape gives one greater viewing access to the forest, there is a distinct quality of light at this time of year which both enhances and subdues aspects of this stark, gray-toned canvas. Light is a curious phenomenon, ungraspable, everchanging, color-creating, and essential for our experience of perception. Perhaps we may grasp something of the nature of light through studying the behavior and expression of colors. But it is not merely this outward expression that we must see and pay attention to. Our inner light, the very activity of our thinking, is necessary for, and actively shapes, our perception.

The diffuse light of a cloudy day flattens the definition of a landscape, which appears shadowless and monotone. In the early morning and at dusk when the sun’s golden light radiates out beneath the thick blanket of cloud, for a fleeting moment the landscape is illuminated and our experience of it transformed. One evening in early spring while walking up to The Nature Institute, I lifted my gaze from the rutted track and was struck by the most vibrant hues of magenta buds glowing like scattered embers emerging from the ashen forest across the hillside. My searching eyes (my spotlight) so expectant for the green of spring, had previously missed this explosion of warmth! Over the following days, I began to notice many more trees flushing with varying shades of scarlet, amber and coral, the subtle differences appearing stronger in bright illumination than in muted light. This first flush of color is the work of the red maple. With its winter store of sugary sap rising to the crown, the red maple brings forth not leaves but a burst of flowering warmth to meet the growing light and warmer temperatures of spring.

With the days gradually getting longer and continuing to warm, new colors emerged in the landscape. The red maple flowers on different trees became more distinct, introducing peach, orange, and yellow hues to the canvas, as the flowers opened and revealed their difference in floral parts. The red maple has flowers that are either seed-bearing or pollen-bearing, and these usually appear separately on individual trees, but not always. The seed-bearing flowers tend to keep their deep scarlet and amber hues as their stalks extend, hung with dangling winged fruits. In contrast, the pollen-bearing flowers quickly distinguish themselves, their mass of stamens bringing forth a wealth of yellow pollen. These pollen-bearing flowers are short-lived and begin to wither and fall from the branches while the seed-bearing flowers continue to fruit.

While the red maple’s fiery flower show unfolds, the oaks start to awaken. Tiny gray-brown buds begin swelling, lengthening and their protective sheath of scales slowly loosen for the first wrinkled leaves to appear with curling pale-green tips and a blanket of magenta-pink filaments. Under a microscope, these appear as clusters of fine hair-like structures called trichomes that contain red pigment and are evenly spaced across the pale green leaf blades.

The oaks bring some of the early signs of green to the forest, tinged with subtle peach hues next to the fiery red maple flowers, which soon are accompanied by the slow emergence of pale-green maple leaves. Within days the forest canopy is dusted with a soft ethereal veil of vibrant and pastel colors. Out of the uniformity of gray trunks and entangled branches the unique expression of a single tree becomes visible — individual trees are now easily identified and different species distinguished from each other. This display of color highlights the beauty and diversity of the outer landscape and, through the act of perceiving, an inner light of joy can be illuminated too.

A closed red oak bud; first leaves; and a closeup of trichomes

Form, Color, and Substance

Within a month of my arrival at the institute, the forest’s greening is in full force as more trees bring forth leaves and continue to grow into the space around them. Hues become stronger and the spaces between individual trees in the forest gradually fill with color and substance. At this point there is a transition in the translucent ethereal quality of the canopy of new leaves, which appear to be more color than substance. The growing leaves expand outward as the branch tips extend outward and upward; leaf forms change shape, increase in size, thickness, and density.

This three-fold process of form, color, and substance transformation changes our experience of the individual tree and its expression in the landscape. As the substance of the leaf grows and becomes denser, less light penetrates through the canopy and shadows form on the forest floor. The forest not only becomes darker but comes closer to any footpath as young branches, heavy with leaf growth, bow down across the path and invite us to do the same. Trees begin to lose their individuality and distinct identity. We no longer observe a tree ‘treeing’ but rather ‘foresting.’ Through this foresting, trees begin to express different qualities which emphasize the collective interaction between the forest and the elements. As a forest forms a single porous canopy, the wind moves through it as a wave in the ocean.

Throughout these processes of ‘leafing,’ ‘treeing,’ and ‘foresting,’ the qualities of form, color, and substance — from the leaf to the landscape — are transformed. Observing and attempting to document, to capture, this process was often overwhelming as I struggled to pay attention to the myriad changes unfolding all at once. To add further to this colorful story, I regularly left the forest outside to delve into the very substance of the leaf through laboratory techniques, exploring the presence of pigments inside the leaf.

Color and Chromatography

The technique of paper chromatography (see ‘Revealing Pigments’) provided further insight into the phenomenon of color development in leaves by capturing snapshots of the pigments present within the leaf substance. I collected leaf samples from selected trees and processed them at regular intervals, providing sequences of chromatographs or ‘color images’ that captured the qualitative change in pigments over time.

What became visible in these sequences further supports my external observations: the new budding leaves are dominated by red pigments (anthocyanin), while green (chlorophyll) and yellow (xanthophyll) pigments appear more subtle. As the leaves grow, the green pigments become more abundant, and the red pigments decrease (relative to the green) until they are no longer visible — which for most trees observed was roughly six weeks after the first leaves emerged.

These pigment changes within the leaf have implications for both the structural formation and the photosynthetic capacity of the leaf as it develops. Further investigations into these internal processes of emerging leaves — particularly in relation to the development of form, substance, and color expression — may provide yet another lens through which to view the phenomenon of color emergence in spring.

Continuing the Story

So where does this all lead us? In the life of a tree, this investigation attempted to explore a tiny snapshot of the phenomenon of color change in maples and oaks. As with many research endeavors, this exploration has revealed several riddles to be investigated further. These may lead to further research into the dynamics of leaf form; color and substance in the fall; red maples and their different expression of flower forms; and trichomes as an external pigment structure in oaks. And perhaps this account of color exploration will also inspire you to step out into the spring landscape and go in search of your own colorful journey.

Springing into Color

Ceinwen Smith

Light, Color, and Change

Form, Color, and Substance

Color and Chromatography

Continuing the Story