DEAD LEAVES CLINGING

 

     While driving through a foggy, soggy, bottomland woods of deciduous trees one rainy afternoon in early March of 2026, I noticed several trees had dead leaves still clinging to their twigs.  I stopped to admire more closely the ginger-hued foliage on pin oak trees and white oak trees and pale-beige-colored leaves on American beech trees in that woodland.  Those dead, dried leaves still attached to their twig moorings added another bit of color to the gray woods, as they had all winter.  And I could see how many trees of each kind were living in that bottomland woods because of the dried foliage still clinging to them.

     As I admired the dead foliage on hose trees I remembered that pin oaks, white oaks and beeches have much in common.  Obviously, they share wooded bottomland habitats with their moist soil.  They all bear nuts that are consumed by squirrels, deer, bears, jays, wild turkeys and other kinds of woodland wildlife.    

     All those trees grew from surviving nuts, many of which were buried by squirrels and jays who forgot where they placed some of them.  Or, the trees grow from nuts that were buried by those creatures who were later killed and eaten by predators, allowing the nuts to develop into trees.  

     All these tree species can grow to a large size, given time.  Many specimens of these species get riddled with cavities where wind ripped limbs off the trees, or where woodpeckers chipped into dead limbs on living trees to make nurseries for their young.  Some kinds of wildlife that move into empty hollows are barred owls, raccoons, squirrels, chickadees, honey bees, black rat snakes and other types of wildlife.

     That afternoon in March, I remembered I heard sleet rattling through clumps of dead foliage and wind rustling them at another time.  Wet snow clings to them, making them even more appealing too see. Those weather happenings add a bit more pleasure to being in a woodland in winter.   

     While looking at the dried leaves on the nut trees, I saw some green and maroon, three-inch hoods of skunk cabbage poking through the mud of a trickle on the woodland floor.  Each hood protects and warms tiny flowers on a fleshy ball inside itself.  Pollinating insects enter a crevice in each hood to collect nectar from those blooms, pollinating them in the process.   

     And while in those woodlands for a few minutes, I saw a gray squirrel climbing a tree and a pair of tufted titmice bustling among twigs of a tree in a quest for insect eggs.  And, somewhere back in the bottomland woods, I heard the hoarse croaking of male wood frogs in a growing pool attracting females of their kind into those puddles to spawn hundreds of eggs per female.  

     I was happy to experience the beauty of dead leaves on oaks and beeches, and a few signs of spring.  They gave me an enjoyable, though brief, time in the woods.  Readers can also enjoy the simple pleasures of nature, almost no matter where you are.        

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