My CommonPlace

In his new introduction to our co-written revision of The Vermont Life Guide to Fall Foliage (2001), Charles Johnson says: “Plants base two of their most fundamental yearly cycles, flowering and dormancy, on the length of days and nights. The amount of daylight they receive is the only true constant in their passage through the years, in their evolution over eons. Everything else is changeable, less predictable, such as weather, soil conditions, even long-term climate. These they may adapt to, but the ratio of day to night is the rhythm of their existence, the great timekeeper.”