Question: Why do leaves change color in the fall?

That’s a surprisingly complicated question. Luckily, I’m a curious sort of person that has wondered the same thing myself!!!

Leaves are where a tree makes its food. Unlike us, they can’t eat sugars to get energy. Instead, they use the green chlorophyll in the leaves to trap energy from the sun to make glucose (a sugar) to get energy. When the weather gets cold, the trees “know” that they won’t be able to make as much food during the short, cold days in winter. So they start to shut down the food making places to conserve as much energy as they can. They shut off the water supply to the leavees, and the green chlorophyll leaves the leaves (ha!), and what’s left behind are the other pigments of the leaf…oranges, yellows and browns. They’ve been there all along, it’s just that they were covered up by the bright green chlorophyll. So the trees don’t really change colours…they just lose their green! Some trees make extra pigments (like purple and red) in the fall because the glucose is trapped in the leaves when the chlorophyll goes away.