Unique

Red Aspen Tree | Ohio Pass, Colorado
Red aspen leaves are not very common in Colorado during the fall season. However, on one of my photography trips I was lucky to encounter this unique red aspen near Ohio Pass. Most times aspen trees will change their leaf color to yellow and orange in the Fall. However, in some rare cases the leaves will change all the way to red.

I was struck by the fact that the entire aspen forest had predominantly yellow leaf aspens, except for a single one. In the middle of this aspen grove, south of Ohio Pass, stood an aspen whose leaves were all entirely red. It was beautiful and truly mesmerizing! I really wanted to capture this eye-catching view.

The difficulty came from the fact that the red aspen tree was on a hillside, which limited my options for choosing my lens angle. Nevertheless, I was able to find a balance and compose in a way that allowed me to capture this fiery aspen tree among its golden counterparts. What a beautiful and deep contrast it created! It stood uniquely proud in the middle of yellow aspen trees, commanding attention.

What makes leaves of deciduous trees green is chlorophyll. It is a photosynthetic pigment found in plants and is used to transform sunlight into energy. During the fall season the days become shorter and the aspens naturally decrease the amount of chlorophyll sent to the leaves. This causes the leaves to lose their green color and then their real color emerges. For the quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx) the natural leaf color is mostly gold yellow. However, in some cases aspen leaves are orange or red, as is the case with this one, captured near Ohio Pass. Researchers Kuo-Gin Chang, Gilbert H. Fechner, and Herbert A. Schroeder from Colorado State University studied red colored aspens. They determined that the reason for the red color was “two anthocyanin pigments, previously unreported for quaking aspen, cyanidin-3-glucoside and very probably cyanidin-3-galactoside”.