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The Aspen Paradox
| Article
# : |
19653 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
1,778 Words |
| Author
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Henry Lansford
Henry Lansford is a free-lance writer and communication
consultant based in Boulder, Colorado. He has been writing
about the natural resources of the Rocky Mountain West for the
past twenty-four years. He is also scientific writer-editor
for the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center of the State
University of New York at Albany. |
In late September-early October, few in Colorado can remain indifferent to the breathtaking beauty of the aspens: Resplendent in all their glory, the flaming stands command the attention of one and all. The U.S. Forest Service maintains a hot line in Denver with information on where the fall color is at its peak throughout the central Rockies, local television weathermen regularly include aspen reports along with their predictions of temperature and precipitation, and on the weekends all the highways and byways in the nearby Front Range are clogged with carloads as aspen fans.
Although aspens grow in every part of the United States except the Southeast and the Great Plains, many people think of the aspen as a symbol of the Rocky Mountain West. That region does have a lot of aspen. It comprises about 20 percent of the inventoried forest land in the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region--about four million acres in Colorado alone.
Aspens don't stand out in eastern forests, where they mingle with oaks, maples and other hardwoods. But in the Rockies where they are virtually the only hardwood in the subalpine zone, they are highly visible in summer as bright verdant patches scattered across great somber expanses of spruce and fir. In autumn, the contrast is even more striking. Because aspen leaves are thin and translucent, they seem to glow with an inner luminosity--even the air seems golden in an aspen grove on a sunny fall afternoon.
Aspen groves are hospitable as well as beautiful. A mature spruce fir forest is a dim and silent place--the heavy shade discourages other plant species. Beneath the translucent leaves of an aspen canopy, however, bright wildflowers flourish in a rich understory that provides habitat and forage for many small animals. Aspen groves attract many more bird species than conifer forests do. Elk and deer bear their young beneath the aspens and often survive hard winters by browsing on young aspens that protrude from deep snow.
The species of aspen that grows in the western United States is Populus tremuloides--quaking aspen. Its leaves are almost constantly in motion. Early French trappers in the Rockies maintained that the trees trembled from shame because the cross on which Christ died was made of aspen wood, but the scientific explanation is more prosaic. The aspen petiole--the leaf stem--has an ovoid cross section, with the thin dimension perpendicular to the leaf blade. The flattened petiole acts as a pivot, allowing the leaf to flutter frantically from side to side in even a gentle
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