Seattle's fall season is in living color

"Oh!"

It was the gasp of the connoisseur confronted with perfection.

"The tupelos," said Sarah Skamser, horticulture instructor at South Seattle Community College. "They're just starting to turn!"

In no time, "they'll be a shocking red," Skamser added as she drove her small Nissan through the Washington Park Arboretum, accompanied by a reporter, fellow college instructor Van Bobbitt and a king-size black dog, Max, who panted heavily and looked out the window, too.

Skamser, Bobbitt and Max are known to skulk through Seattle neighborhoods, jumping out of the car to sample a berry the uninformed would never dream was edible, sighing in dismay over how the tree in someone's yard "looks stressed," conducting tree-identification finals in the Green Lake neighborhood, and exclaiming with delight at the sight of nature taking its natural course — leaf by leaf.

And this was a leaf tour — a seasonal check on where and when to see fall leaves.

"I think fall is underestimated here," Skamser said. Unlike in other parts of the country, here the seasonal edges of fall are blurred with trees gradually turning color — sometimes beginning as early as July and ending in December. But it's beautiful just the same, she said.

She leaped from the car to grab a handful of katsura leaves that shimmered like gold-and-pink coins.

"They smell like burnt sugar," she said, and the fragrance filled the car.

Many Seattle neighborhoods have stunning displays of fall color, Bobbitt said, among them the rambling, tree-lined boulevards designed by Frederick Olmsted at the turn of the century. Olmsted always tried to bring "greenery back into the city," Bobbitt said.

And the "emerald necklace" of parks like Madrona and Mount Baker are some of his examples, he said, adding that by mid-October, many of the trees there should be in full color.

The turning of the leaves depends on the tree's genetics, as well as on the climate, Bobbitt said.

Chilly mornings mean faster color and the dry summer could mean early color, as well. However, trees in parks surrounded by concrete, which creates warmth, may take longer to turn than trees in a more natural environment, he said, spying a grove of black cottonwood.

Soon, he said, those cottonwood leaves will turn "to ribbons of yellow against the leaden sky."

Just then a tiny gold canoe floated downward on the chilly morning breeze.

Some books to help identify trees:

• "Eyewitness Books: Tree," by David Burnie and Peter Chadwick (DK Publishing, $15.95).

• "A Field Guide to Western Trees" (Peterson Field Guides, $19), by George A. Petrides and Roger Tory Peterson

• "National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees: Western Region" (Alfred A. Knopf, $19.95), by Elbert Luther Little and Angelo Lomeo.

Or pick up "Mac's Field Guide To Northwest Trees" (Mountaineers Books, $4.95), a laminated, double-sided, one-page illustrated guide.

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