Peak fall foliage on view on Long Island, experts say

Peak fall foliage will appear this weekend across much of Long Island, according to New York State tourism officials, a development some experts said was later than normal.

"In other years, we would be well past peak," said Maura Brush, a landscape horticulturist who is president of Old Westbury Gardens, 200 acres of landscaped grounds, woods, lakes and ponds that once populated the estate of the industrialist Phipps family.

But the dogwoods behind the garden’s dark green half-mile long hemlock are now "vibrant crimson," and in Old Westbury and elsewhere on Long Island, maples, sweet gums and ginkgos are popping, Brush said.

Volunteer observers for the Empire State Development Division of Tourism’s I LOVE NY program — there are 85 statewide, and four on Long Island — have identified peak or near peak spots in dozens of Long Island locations including from Hempstead to Shelter Island and Montauk Point. A sample entry on the program's website details "brilliant ochre, burned umber, cranberry and tangerine leaves" at Hempstead Lake State Park in West Hempstead.

In a warmer and drier than usual fall, flower gardens at Old Westbury Gardens, typically dormant by this time of year, are "still going strong," Brush said. "In my 20-something years here, this is something I’ve never seen," she said. "Our formal rose garden — somebody could walk in there and look only at roses and think we were only in midsummer."

At Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park in Oyster Bay, Kayla Cheshire, communications and marketing manager for the Planting Fields Foundation, said the bright yellows of the park’s ginkgos were set off by the darker pinks and purples of beautyberries and blueberries. Laid out for the W.R. Coe family by Frederick Law Olmsted, the park recently installed 2,000 feet of accessible walkway, "so everybody is able to enjoy the colors of the fall season," Chesire said.

Long Island, New York City and other parts of lower New York State are in moderate drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The National Weather Service station at Upton recorded 0.13 inches of precipitation in October and .34 inches in September, well off mean historical readings of 4.44 inches in October and 3.16 inches in September.

"We’ve had a somewhat compressed fall color season," said Jonathan Lehrer, chair of the Department of Urban Horticulture and Design at Farmingdale State College. "In the last week or two, suddenly it’s gone from green to showy colors, and the leaves have dropped in the last few days."

The year in horticulture, he said, had been "unusual ... from the beginning. From the earliest part of spring, we had plants blooming out of their normal sequence" after a warmer than usual winter. "Then we had this unprecedented drought ... It’s had a strong impact on late-season phenomena such as development of fall color."

Those reds, oranges and yellows are symptoms of "plants entering their season of dormancy, shutting down their growth for the year," Lehrer said. They coincide with the hardening and thickening of stems that insulate plants against frost. But drought and the persistence of warm temperatures can influence those developments, Lehrer said. "If the plants haven’t acclimated, that can result in damage which doesn’t become apparent until the following April or May," he said.

Elizabeth Watson, an associate professor in Stony Brook University’s Department of Ecology and Evolution, said scientists know more about the timing of leafing and spring than they do about peak foliage and trees losing leaves in the fall, though some data going back to the 1950s does suggest a shift of a few days later in the year.

Some apparent signs of fall, like leaves yellowing, could actually be evidence of trees reacting to stress, she added.