California Fall Color

Dude, autumn happens here, too.

Rose Hips, Napa Valley (10/17/09)

Amazing, but with a month to go before the official start of autumn, a few of the exotic ornamental trees in our area (Sierra Foothills, 800 ft. elev.) have begun showing signs of change.  Along local boulevards, some branches on Chinese pistache have turned brown.  Now that’s probably something peculiar to those trees, as everything else remains green on what has been an otherwise mild summer for California, after a wet winter.

California Fall Color may fall sooner than the leaves, however.  This blog was begun with financial support from a few destinations in California that experience spectacular fall color.  In order to be fully representative of our name, however, we included reports from across California at no cost to other destinations.  However, this summer we learned that the funding that supported California Fall Color isn’t available as in past years or will be used for other purposes, so funding to support weekly reporting here has been lost.

Without financial support, it is not possible to allocate the time needed to collect and process weekly submitted reports, as well as do my own reporting.  Part of the reason is California’s long fall color season (longest, most varied and perhaps the most spectacular in the USA).  It begins in early September, when color begins to show at the highest elevations of the Eastern Sierra and descends by elevation through the end of November.

I plan to post occasional reports, but only when received by color spotters.  I won’t be sending weekly fall color reports to TV weather reporters, newspapers, blogs and social media as in the past few years, mostly because the basic funding to do so isn’t there, so I apologize to those media who’ve come to depend on California Fall Color for accurate and regularly posted reports and photographs.

If you’re a color spotter or want to be, email reports and photos to us.  What we need is a detailed a description of what you saw: type of foliage, colors seen, where seen and degree of change (your assessment of what percentage of total foliage has turned color: 0-15%, 15-30%, 30-50%, 50-75%, 75-100% or Past Peak.  Peaking color is above 50%.  This is the same scale used by The Weather Channel).

Share what you see and and let’s all look forward to a colorful autumn.

Photo Credit: © 2009, John Poimiroo

Today marks the first day of winter, though Jack Frost truly arrived on the weekend following Thanksgiving Day.  And so, officially, California Fall Color will remain dormant until fall arrives in 2010.  Thanks again to all who contributed fall color reports this year… see you again at the end of summer.

Sacramento-based travel writer Barbara Steinberg comments to us this past week…

“I must say this really has been the most colorful Sacramento autumn I can recall. I guess the lack of rain and storms has kept the leaves on the trees…downtown Sacramento, Midtown, and surrounding neighborhoods are just beautiful. And a recent visit to Fairfield and Suisun Valley was much the same. The walnuts are green and yellow…vineyards are still showing their colors and clusters of grapes.  Still…I do wish it would rain.”

Gum and Mulberry trees, Lakeport (11/24/09)

Although autumn doesn’t end until December 21, Thanksgiving Day always seems to be the last day of the year in  which Californians are in an autumn state of mind.  After that, a blizzard of holiday sales make falling prices overwhelm falling leaves.

While there’s still lots of color to be enjoyed, most Californians shift their search from looking for fall color to searching for colorful Christmas lights and Christmas trees.

However, just because the holiday season is upon us does not mean that Mother Nature has given up her beautiful show of autumn color.  California’s urban landscape flickers with auburn, orange, crimson and yellow within its parks and along its boulevards.  Because California’s weather has been mostly mild and clear this fall, 2009 will be remembered as one of the best for beautiful and long-lasting displays of fall color.

This is the last planned California Fall Color report of the season.  Our thanks are expressed to the many color spotters across The Golden State who emailed photographs and reports.

Clear Lake, Lakeport (11/24/09)

75-100% — Lake County. Terre Logsdon reports that “While the harvest of pears, walnuts, and wine grapes has ended for the year, large swaths of color throughout the county remain to be enjoyed as the many oak varieties – black, blue, valley, and Oregon – are at 75% of peak and turning a muted gold to vibrant orange against a backdrop of evergreen pines. Sweet gums are a riot of color in the town of Lakeport, at their peak of color ranging from gold to deep burgundy. Flowering mulberries are nearing their peak ranging from canary yellow to bright green.

Dickens Christmas Market, Lakeport (stock photo)

An annual Dickens’ Christmas Market occurs Nov. 28 in Lakeport.  This annual Christmas event transforms Lakeport into an old English village, complete with costume-clad characters, food booths, and entertainment, as well as an all-day Christmas Market from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Lighted parade begins at 6 p.m. and Christmas tree lighting follows at 6:30 p.m. on Main Street. CLICK HERE for more about this event or call (707) 263-5092.

75-100% — Onyx. Color spotter Danna Stroud of Mammoth Lakes reports that lovely gold colors clusters of trees in the Southern Sierra along CA-178 west of CA-14 and east of Lake Isabella.  Danna oversees the Mammoth Lakes Visitors Bureau which will soon open one of the three new California Welcome Centers recently approved for designation by the California Travel & Tourism Commission.  The new Welcome Centers are located in Mammoth Lakes, El Dorado Hills and Vista and should open in early 2010.  When these state-sanctioned visitor information centers open, the number of California Welcome Centers will increase to 17.  California Welcome Centers bring together visitor information from across California and are great places to get maps and guidance on visiting California.

75-100% — San Francisco Bay Area. Color is at or past peak around San Francisco, providing lots of nostalgic autumn color in the Bay Area for the Thanksgiving Day weekend.  If you’re in The City this weekend, head to Yerba Buena Gardens and Golden Gate Park for the most diverse show of color.  Cindy Hu reports that russet and gold have “been supplanted by LEDs in many corners of The City.  Market Street is adorned with illuminated snowflakes and the palm trees in Union Square have been encircled with white lights.”  She recommends checking out these “bright spots:” Embarcadero Center, Pier 39, Ghirardelli Square, Union Square, Huntington Park, Castro and 18th Streets, Union Street, Golden Gate Park, The Presidio and Fisherman’s Wharf.  CLICK HERE for more details.

Beautiful color may also be found down the Peninsula in Burlingame, Menlo-Atherton, Palo Alto and Los Altos; in the East Bay communities of Danville, Moraga and Walnut Creek; and in the north bay cities of San Rafael and Novato.

75-100% — Sacramento. This Central Valley city is known as being second only to Paris in the number of trees, per capita.  Sacramento has so many trees that special rules govern when and where you can park, so that leaves can be cleared during autumn.  The best displays of fall color are found downtown, surrounding the State Capitol, in the Fabulous Forties (avenues numbered in the 40s) and surrounding Land Park, south of US 50 and downtown.

Past Peak — Plumas County. Color spotter Suzi Brakken reports that the Plumas and Lassen National Forest offices are now selling Christmas tree cutting permits for $10.  All you need is a saw, dry boots and snow clothes. Keep in mind that snow is plentiful in the higher elevations, especially where the favorite Silvertips are found. The permits for Plumas National Forest are also available at many local businesses, including at the Plumas County Visitors Center at the Quincy airport, a half mile west of Quincy on CA-70.  Maps of approved cutting areas come with permits, which are on sale through Dec. 24.

On the Thanksgiving weekend, holiday light parades will be held in Chester and Taylorsville, and merchant open houses with refreshments and tree-lightings will be held in small towns throughout Plumas County this weekend and next. For more information, CLICK HERE.

Past Peak — Gold Country. Color has now descended below 1,000′ in the gold country with little left to change among the oaks and maples.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  See you next fall!

Holly's Hill Vineyard, El Dorado County (11/15/09)

75-100% — Newton and Snow Roads (2,000′). Black Oaks and bigleaf maple are fully orange and yellow from U.S. 50 south of Placerville on Newton Road to the Pleasant Valley, indicative of similar color to be found throughout the Sierra foothills.

We drove to Holly’s Hill Vineyards in the El Dorado AVA, to find the vineyards to be at peak with orange to red across the rolling hills, as these snaps from an iPhone attest.

75-100% — Southern California. Jimbo comments from Southern California that there’s still lots of color to be found in the mountains.  He writes, “The black oaks have turned around places like Crestline, Idyllwild and Palomar Mountain.”

Holly's Hill Vineyard, El Dorado County (11/15/09)

Thanks to readers, like Jimbo, I’m able to cover all of the state.  Do email me if you’ve got a report.  Photos are great.  Give me your full name and I’ll make sure you get credited.  These reports will continue through Thanksgiving Day.

Photo Credit: © 2009, John Poimiroo

Chinese Pistache (11/11/09

Fall color has now dropped in elevation to sea level.  Exotic trees are showing first, as can be seen in these photos of Chinese Pistache (pistacia chinensis) and Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis) photographed at 800′ in El Dorado Hills.

Eastern Redbud (11/11/09)

Native trees from sea level to 1,000′ still have two weeks to go before peak, but the exotics are providing a dazzling show of yellow, orange, red, lime, burgundy and brown.

Planned communities, where landscaped boulevards cluster tree species are literally glowing.  Chinese pistache, liquidambar, redbud, red oak, ornamental pear, persimmon, crape myrtle, maidenhair and birch are turning quickly and shedding leaves with each storm.

Parks and arboreta will deliver good fall color viewing through November.  A map to where fall color can be found within the San Francisco Botanical Garden is included in the preceding blog.

Japanese Maple, Taylorsville (11/12/09)

50-100% — Urban Landscape (0 – 1000′).  It is difficult to express a precise percent of change for so vast a territory as is California, though exotic foliage (that not native to California) is at or nearing peak across the state, as seen in this photograph of a Japanese maple sent to us by Richard McCutcheon from Taylorsville (southeast of Lake Almanor).  Native trees below 1,000′ are anywhere from 15% to 75%, again according to species and micro-climate.  Fall color viewing continues across California, though the brightest displays are now within the exotic landscapes of the state’s cities and towns.

Photo Credit: © 2009, John Poimiroo

Japanese Maple: © 2009, Richard McCutcheon

San Francisco Botanical Garden Fall Color Map

Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park (11/2/09)

San Francisco is California’s emerald city by the Bay.  The City prides itself for being one of the most environmentally attentive municipalities on Earth and that pride is evident within its many parks and streets where beautiful fall color can be found.  This is particularly true in The City’s expansive Golden Gate Park.  However, Golden Gate Park is so large it can be difficult to find the color.

To the rescue comes San Francisco color spotter James Theriault who provides “a very clever, detailed map of the San Francisco Botanical Garden with notations on where the best color is to be found,” writes San Francisco publicist, Cindy Hu.  To open the map, click on the orange “San Francisco Botanical Garden Fall Color Map” above.  You’ll have to click again on it for the map to open.  This is a .pdf file, so you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader or another .pdf reader to see the map.

Begin your tour at the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park.  This is an open-air concert hall between the fabulous de Young art museum, Japanese Tea Garden (a magical place to see fall color) and the world’s greenest museum, the California Academy of Sciences.

Congratulations to The Palace hotel, San Francisco’s great accommodation which on December 15 celebrates its 100th birthday.  I’ve stayed there many times and have enjoyed luxuriating in its traditions, beauty and superb service.  As a tribute to that great hotel, an article I penned about it for California magazine will be blogged here on Friday.  Now, The Palace’s anniversary has little to do with fall color, though now’s the time to head to San Francisco to see The City’s beautiful change of season and what better place to stay at than the grand and historic Palace Hotel!?  Besides, my daughter works there and I’m a couldn’t-be-prouder dad.

Photo Credit: copyright 2009, James McCormick

“Curious” posted the following comment on The Mighty Sparrow today in response to something I’d posted previously… “I’m still wondering about “the wet season…warm dry days and cold nights” part. Have the introduced trees and native poison oak in the Bay Area not gotten the memo? Every fall the liquidambars turn every color between yellow and burgundy, the dogwoods turn persimmon, the ashes send down flurries of gold, the pistachios go fire-engine red, many varieties of maple catch fire, all without regard to summer drought and mild nights. This fall was quite mild yet the poison oak (starting before the two early rains) was particularly spectacular in the Peninsula hills. Could it be that the species of plant is the more important variable, so that even without the boost of a rainy summer and cold autumn nights many varieties of plants can have deep, intense color? Or is it that the wet season in question can happen season-before-last and the cold in “cold nights” just needs to be equivalent to a typical Bay Area night in early October? (PS Love your web site!)”

I responded, “You’re right, foliage turns by species. That is, poison oak tend to change collectively and that can be on a different schedule than liquidambars or other deciduous foliage. The triggering mechanism, however, is a shortening of the days which results in lower chlorophyll production, thereby revealing the color. Rain in advance of autumn serves the purpose of making color last longer. In a drought, the leaves tend to dry up faster which shortens the time they show color. As for temperature, the ideal conditions are warm days and cold nights. That combination serves to intensify the color. Rainy nights are not good for the fall color as cloud cover retains heat. Clear, cold night skies and warm days are best.

In our reports, you’ll see that some species turn earlier than others, but also note that color has been descending since mid September at a rate of about 1,000′ per week. Right now, the color has dropped in elevation to be appearing all over Northern California. I found so little seasonal color in Southern California this past weekend, that it’s hard to say whether there’s just none to be seen or it hasn’t gotten to that latitude and elevation, as yet.”

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There’s a seven-letter reason people enjoy living in Los Angeles so much… weather.  For most of the year, it’s hard to beat LA’s consistently mild and clement weather.  Fall and winter are easily handled, unless you come unprepared.  I met one such person at LAX before my return flight, yesterday.  She was a Kentucky horsewoman who’d come out west for the Breeder’s Cup held at Santa Anita Race Track.  She’d visited the year previously and recalled how balmy it had been.  This year, however, she shivered through several days of racing, and was looking forward to flying back to a warmer Kentucky.  I had flown south from Sacramento to enjoy UCLA defeat Washington at the Rose Bowl.  In previous years, watching college football in Pasadena meant wearing a t-shirt and sun screen.  Not so this weekend.  A chill settled across the greater Los Angeles basin, giving Southern California a bit of autumnal bite to its air, particularly at night.  Too bad there wasn’t much fall color to go with the crisp, sweater-weather temps.

0-15% — Los Angeles.  The fall color in the City of Los Angeles – what there is of it – is disappointing right now.  Just about all the trees to be seen in greater Los Angeles were planted, and those exotic species were showing very little color change, if any.  Some near the coast are showing dark red emerging from darker green.  And as reported previously, while the fall color in Chico was literally luminescent, in LA, it was lackluster.

Frank Helmholz carving a capital at the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina (11/5/09)

Today, I drove from Redding, south, stopping in Vina to visit the Abbey of New Clairvaux.  There, master stone mason Frank Helmholz is leading a team of the world’s best stone masons in reconstructing an 800 year old Cistercian gothic abbey’s chapter house (meeting room).

Walnut Orchard and Chapter House building (11/5/09)

William Randolf Hearst saved the chapter house from sure destuction and despoilation, though ran out of funds before he could reconstruct it.  In a way, it’s fortunate that happened, as it would have been placed in one of the Hearst family’s private homes.  Now, it’s being rebuilt for everyone to enjoy.  For many years, the monks at Vina have been aided by private donations (since they live a life of poverty, hard work and prayer) in rebuilding the structure.  It’s a laborious process, but when finished, it will be the finest example of original Cistercian gothic architecture in the western hemisphere.

I caught Frank Helmholz as his crew were finishing up work on the central support columns that will eventually support a spectacular vaulted gothic ceiling inside the chapter house.  The structure that contains their stone work is surrounded by walnut groves, prune orchards and vineyards, where the monks often toil.  Here’s a report what you’ll see if you drive along CA-99 north of Sacramento to Vina.

Walnut Orchard and Vineyards, Abbey of New Clairvaux (11/5/09)

30-50% — CA-99.  From Yuba City north to Vina, prune and walnut orchards similar orchards have turned bright yellow-orange, tinged with bronze.  Other orchards along the route remain green, though with an early hint of color.

75-100% — Chico.  This college town (Chico State University) has perhaps California’s prettiest autumnal urban forest.  The trees are nearing peak and Chico is darn near phosphorescent right now with vibrant orange-red, yellow-orange, pink, lime-yellow, garnet, and cadmium yellow colors.  If you’ve never been to Chico, it’s well worth the drive, particularly for the next week or two, when the town is litterally aflame with fall color.  If you go, include lunch at the Sierra Nevada Brewery.  Whether or not you enjoy beer, the restaurant is superb.  Chico has lots of arts galleries.  One of my favorite is Orient & Flume Art Glass at 2161 Park Ave.  A guide to local art galleries is available at most of the galleries.  Bidwell Park encompasses over 3,600 acres, making it one of the largest municipal parks in the nation.  The Bidwell Mansion preserves the home of one of California’s most acclaimed pioneers, and the town has several museums, including the National Yo-Yo Museum.

Photo Credit: © 2009, John Poimiroo