"In Autumn, deciduous trees don’t lose their leaves—they loose them.
It is the final step in a highly ordered and carefully controlled process initiated in preparation for a resting period (winter) in above-ground portions of the tree.
The place where the leaf separates (abscises) from the tree is typically located at the base of the leaf stalk (petiole). It is called the abscission zone (AZ). The AZ is no random fracture point but is actually built-in, “pre-positioned” during leaf formation. As a publication from the University of Georgia (USA) puts it: “Leaves are designed to be disposable.”
With the post-summer hint of coolness in the air, before the onset of wintry weather, trees initiate a “senescence sequence” to systematically retrieve the re-usable resources from the leaves. As this process begins, and the green chlorophyll pigment and other parts of the light-harvesting (photosynthetic) complex are dismantled, the leaf changes color.
First, the formerly hidden carotenoid pigments (e.g., yellow xanthophylls and orange beta-carotene) are now revealed, turning the leaves an orange-yellow hue, as the normally-dominant green chlorophyll fades.
Then, when about half the chlorophyll has been degraded, and as the level of phosphate in the leaf drops, the production of anthocyanin pigments increases. Anthocyanins tint autumn leaves red-purple, and blend with the carotenoids to create the breathtakingly beautiful deeper orange and fiery red coloration that tourists travel long distances to see and photograph.
The valuable materials that the tree extracts from the leaves before leaf drop are stored during winter in the tree’s roots, trunk, and branches until next spring when they are ‘recycled’ to re-leaf the tree. This has to be done during the milder weather of autumn, because there can be no retrieval from leaves after ‘Jack Frost’ arrives.
With the pulling back of resources from the leaf now completed, the abscission zone becomes a hotbed of activity, in three locations:
a cell wall degradation area;
a shear force generation area; and
a tree protection zone.
All of these must be in place for successful leaf shedding and effective tree survival.
With the abscission process triggered by a raft of chemical signals (including, it is believed, ethylene produced by the internally-gutted leaf), AZ cells start to secrete enzymes. These dissolve the ‘glue’ that holds cells together and degrade the primary wall between cells. The surrounding AZ cells actively produce the necessary abscission materials throughout; i.e., they remain alive and active until abscission is completed.
While the AZ can be 5–40 cells wide, within that zone only a band 1–3 cells wide will disconnect from each other to form the fracture line.
The weakening of the walls of those cells, coupled with increasing internal water pressure inside the cells, causes the cells to swell. This expansion generates tremendous shear forces, i.e., pushing and pulling on surrounding weakened cell walls, mechanically opening up fracture lines between cell walls.
Wind tugging on the leaves helps these fracture lines to grow, as do gravity, precipitation and animal interference.
While there is still much to learn about abscission, we can see that leaf fall doesn’t just happen, but rather is a carefully coordinated series of complex chemical processes—which would be controlled by the plant’s genes.
Researchers have now mapped out a genetic pathway, or ‘signaling cascade’, behind abscission in the common laboratory plant Arabidopsis (water cress). They have identified that there is a key network of genes that code for proteins in a sequential manner. Each step of the cumulative processes that make up the cascade is dependent on the one before it.
This presents a challenge to the evolutionary paradigm—because if just one of these steps in the signaling cascade is absent, the abscission process doesn’t work.
Q: In addition, how did evolution produce genes that code for enzymes that can digest themselves?
All-or-nothing genetic cascades don’t fit the claimed step-by-step evolution story, but rather fit with the Bible’s account that plants were designed by a super-intelligent creator—God. He designed them to fit the seasons He made too (While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. Genesis 8:22). Autumn, and its colorful cascade of leaves, are no accident!"
CMI
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