Aspen’s brightest season !

On its southwestern corner, our property has four aspen trees that are rather precocious, they’re first at bearing leaves and first at turning yellow. Each fall season, the quartet always displays a spectacular, colorful sight. 

These trees, native to cooler areas of North America, are one of several species referred to by the common name “aspen”. In fact, it’s commonly called quaking aspen because their leaves attach to branches via a long and flattened petiole, so that even the slightest breeze causes the leaves to flutter. 

This gives the overall tree the appearance that it's quaking or trembling. They generally have tall trunks, reach 80 feet tall, with smooth pale bark, scarred with black. The glossy green leaves, dull beneath, become golden to yellow, rarely red, in autumn. 

The species often propagates through its roots to form large clonal groves originating from a shared root system. The aspen tree “Populus tremuloides” is the most widely distributed in North America, being found from Canada to central Mexico. 

My wife doesn’t like them much as they leave many residues like catkins in the spring and as they often ooze sap from their trunk or branches when wounded or when infected by fungal diseases. Of course, they become a recurrent piece of work when they shed their many leaves and we have to remove them before the first snow falls. 

On the other hand, I’m a fan, so autumn never fails to excite me!