Autumn colours 2020

Autumn 2020 in England has been particularly good for the colours. This is due to the weather over the preceding months. An article in the Guardian forecast this in early Oct : "UK set for burst of vivid autumn colours after sunny September. A spectacular and prolonged autumn display of colour is predicted for the UK’s parks and gardens thanks to good sunny spells in the spring and September and some nurturing dampness in the summer. The golds, reds, purples, russets and oranges that provide a burst of joy before the winter months are likely to be particularly vivid this year, the National Trust said."

It is the length of daylight hours that is the primary trigger for trees to begin the process of shutting down for the winter. The leaves change colours before they are shed. Weather conditions through the summer and early autumn affect the rate of leaf loss and intensity of colour. The clocks went back one hour on 25th Oct. 

The green chlorophyll pigments, which help the leaves produce sugars from sunlight, break down to reveal a dazzling rainbow of yellows, oranges, reds and russets. See more about the colours on this BBC blog.

These leaves had already fallen by 19 Oct and there were lots of berries:

I also saw an abundance of fungi in many places

The greatest variety and abundance of mushrooms is usually found in October. This abundance may be due to trees transferring sap and sugar reserves into their root systems for storage during winter dormancy.

As someone recently said on tv, autumn is the time when nature is having a party.

Hornimans Park had been growing pumpkins and gourds all summer and this was the result -

Some of the gourds before being harvested -

A swan family on Regent's Canal. The cygnets stay with the parents until next Spring -

A green woodpecker feeding on grapes (and my blog about this)

Hampton Court and Bushey Park -

Addington Hills -

One of my best times for autumn colours was when I was in New Hamphire in the USA. See my blog.

Autumn equinox 2020

Tuesday, 22 September 2020 was the autumn equinox. This is the first day of autumn in UK. 

September has generally been warm, with many days in the mid 20's C in London. It was 24℃ on the equinox. But that was set to change as the forecast for the next few days was down to about 13 C.

It's been a very dry summer. There was hardly any rain in the SE of England.

This year there has been an abundance of apples on the trees around me, and the conkers on the horse chestnut trees have been plentiful and large in size. Also the grape vines have produced lots of fruit this year.

Twin conkers !

I love conkers. As a child I used to play "conkers" with my parents, so that meant collecting as many as I could. And I still can't resist picking them up when I see fat, shiny brown ones lying on the floor. I soon dry out though. I no longer play conkers, instead I use them to throw at cats that disturb the birds and squirrels. 

Conkers is a traditional children's game in Great Britain, played using the seeds of horse chestnut trees. The game has two players, each with a conker threaded onto a piece of string: they take turns striking each other's conker until one breaks. It was quite a painful game as often a conker would hit your hand. And unless you held the string tightly there was the chance it would be pulled from your hand. See Wikipedia on the game of conkers, and another page on Historic UK.

Not many leaves are falling yet except for this tree, I'm not sure if it is a rowan

My blog on Autumn equinox 2017.

Autumn equinox 2017

22 September 2017 - the first day of autumn and the autumn equinox.

“Equinox” (equal night) is when the sun spends the same amount of time above and below the horizon with the tilt of the Earth exactly the same so it is not slanted away or towards the sun, thus making the hours of darkness and light equal.

“Solstice,” (sun stands still) is when the sun stops before reversing its direction causing sunlight to reach the southernmost and northernmost extremes of the Earth and providing them with longer nights and days.

Both an equinox and solstice happen twice each year. An equinox happens at a specific moment in time unlike the solstice which happens in days.

The solstice happens during summer and winter when the sun is the farthest away. The summer solstice is when days of sunlight are the longest, and the winter solstice is when the days of darkness are also the longest.

The equinox happens during the start of autumn and spring, the time when the sun is closest to the equator.

Having said that, there are still different ideas as to when autumn starts. It depends whether you follow the meteorological or astronomical calendar. There's three weeks difference between them both.

In meteorological terms autumn begins on September 1 and ends on November 30. The meteorological calendar uses the Gregorian calendar to split up the four seasons into three month blocks, which, according to the Met Office, makes it easier to observe forecasting and compare seasonal statistics.

Spring: March, April, May
Summer: June, July, August
Autumn: September, October, November
Winter: December, January, February

However the astronomical calendar says autumn starts on Sept 22 this year. Astronomers base the date of the seasons upon celestial events, in autumn's case the autumnal equinox, when night and day are roughly equal length.

It was mostly a miserable summer in the UK weatherwise. The decent weather left after mid July and the rest of the summer was generally cool, cloudy and wet, with the exception of the August bank holiday weekend (28 Aug). There was an autumnal feel the last 2 weeks of August, with the nights drawing in, cooler air and a few leaves turning brown. Blackberries were ready in July, which is particularly early.

By the autumn equinox, although it felt autumnal, it still looked mostly like summer, as few trees had started to turn brown. 22 Sept in London was beautifully sunny with a clear blue sky.

The exception to this is the 'conker trees'. Many of the horse chestnut trees have a disease caused by a fungus, Guignardia aesculi. It is known as Guignardia leaf blotch, as it shows as brown blotches on the leaves and as seems to be the case, the whole leaf turns brown. The horse chestnut or conker trees have been turning brown since July, due to the blotch, not autumn. The conkers started falling around the end of August.

Autumn in March in KL

When I came back from Thailand in early March 2013, I noticed that the normally lush green view from my condo was now patchy green and brown. It looked as if Autumn had arrived.


This is the normal view -

Even though there were some days with heavy rain, the colours stayed brown. I just hope it is an 'autumn' effect and not that the trees are dying.

The cemetery was also very brown. And on 2 occasions someone was having a good bonfire! -

Autumn colours in England

I arrived in England at end of Oct which was too late for the really good autumn colours. However they were still colourful to me, as living in Malaysia, I've forgotten about autumn!

view from mum's bedroom

Mells in Somerset

bare trees on Mendip

a country path

old tree

Burrington Combe

blue sky only lasted one day

Priddy Pond with reeds



I  skated on here in winters past

someone painting

pines and blue sky


 And some scenes from Richmond Park -

© Liz Price
No reproduction without permission