the.com/leaf fall
trees firing their own employees before winter audits them to death.
means The seasonal dropping of leaves from deciduous trees in autumn, and by extension the season itself; in much of the English-speaking world the older native name for what is now usually called 'autumn' or 'fall.'
from A plain compound of two old Germanic words: 'leaf,' from Old English 'lēaf' (related to German 'Laub' and Dutch 'loof'), and 'fall,' from Old English 'feallan,' to drop. English once had several names for the third season — 'harvest,' then 'autumn' borrowed from French, and the homegrown 'fall,' short for 'fall of the leaf' or 'leaf-fall.' When colonists carried English across the Atlantic, 'fall' stuck in America while 'autumn' won out in Britain — so 'leaf fall' is, quite literally, the season described by what the trees are doing.
- chemical cut
- Trees grow a sealing layer to push leaves off.
- color reveal
- Yellows hid under green all summer long.
- timed by light
- Shortening days, not cold, trigger the drop.
- free fertilizer
- Fallen leaves feed next year's roots.
- called abscission
- The scientific term for engineered self-amputation.