GREEN MIRACLE

      In a few days the end of April, every year, whole deciduous woods in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, miracuously turn from tree-bark gray to leaf-green.  Innumerable buds of deciduous trees and shrubbery, including on oaks, maples, beeches, birches, hickories, spicebushes and other woody species of plants, suddenly open, almost overnight, and their small leaves grow rapidly.  

     Amazingly to me, the buds of every tree and bush of a species open at the same time.  It seems every living being has an inner clock, or its genetic code responds to lengths of light per day, or average temperatures, which is a miracle.

     Tree and shrub foliage, like all green plants, is packed with green chlorophyll that adds beauty to landscapes.  Using energy from the sun's rays, green chloroplasts miracuously combine carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water to make sugar, the plants' food for growth.  Leaves emit oxygen as a waste product, which animal life uses to survive.  Animals breathe in oxygen, and exhale carbon dioxide, which plants use for growth.  Simply by breathing, animals create their own food.  

    Multitudes of small caterpillars, some of them hanging temporarily in mid-air by their own threads, consume the new foliage on trees and shrubbery.  And some of those caterpillars are ingested by certain neotropical birds come north from Central and South America to raise young in northeastern North America's deciduous woods, including a variety of warblers, vireos, thrushes, tanagers and other kinds of woodland nesters.  Some species nest in Lancaster County, and other places at the same latitude.  But other kinds continue farther north to raise young.  

     It's a pleasure to see and hear some of those attractive birds in the woods, starting early in May.  For example, I enjoy hearing the flutes of wood thrushes, the chanting of ovenbird warblers and the hoarse choruses of scarlet tanagers in local woods.

     Deciduous leaves seem to glow from within during summer rains.  And they surely glow beautifully in another way when bathed in golden sunlight.  

     Cherry trees bloom as new leaves grow from their buds, including the multi-flowered choke cherries.  Then we can see the whitish tents of tent caterpillars, attached to slim twigs in the trees.  One can see most of the caterpillars at home in their tents during each day.  But under the cover of darkness, tent caterpillars emerge from the webbing they built to roam through cherry trees to ingest the foliage of those trees.  

     However, yellow-billed and black-billed cuckoos of North America specialize in poking holes in tent webbing and extracting and ingesting many of the larvae inside.  Cuckoos help in keeping this kind of moth from getting too numerous.  

     The opening of innumerable tree leaf buds and the growth of deciduous leaves, seemingly overnight, is miraculous.  But life on Earth is full of miracles, everywhere, all the time.      

                  







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