THE FUNCTION OF ANTHOCYANINS IN LEAVES

Again, my interest in “why leaves are sometimes red” dates back to my experiences in Malaysia, and led to some early papers with tropical plants.  I was never satisfied with my, or others’, explanations of the phenomenon and keep playing around with the subject.  Kevin Gould worked with me in 1994 specifically on anthocyanin function, which led to a controversial scientific correspondence to Nature in 1995.  Since then I have my turned my focus on the distribution of anthocyanins in leaves of a large sample (463 taxa) of tropical plants, looking for influences of phylogeny, development and ecology on their presence in leaf tissues.  I worked on the dynamics of pigment change in woody species at the Harvard Forest—with Missy Holbrook and Taylor Feild.  These results are in various stages of preparation for publication.  However, we now know that anthyocyanin synthesis is induced during senescence in a large sample of temperate woody plants, and we have evidence from red osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera) that the anthocyanins are photoprotective.  Kevin Gould and I are organizing a one day symposium on “Why Leaves Turn Red” for the Botanical Society of America meetings in Albuquerque this coming August.