🍃 Shake your sugar makers! The Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) is one of the park's few trees whose leaves turn color in autumn--from vivid greens to neon yellows and blushed reds. And oh how those leaves can dance! 🌬️ Their "trembling" leaves owe their moves to the shape of the petiole, or the reddish stalk that joins the leaves to their white stems. While most trees possess round petioles, those of the Quaking Aspen are flattened perpendicular to the leaf surface (See Photo 3). This allows them to easily swivel and flutter in the slightest breeze. 🐛 Why so tremulous? Having such restless leaves is hypothesized to have multiple benefits, including reduced herbivory (bugs have a hard time eating your leaves when they can barely hang onto them), increased photosynthesis in lower canopies (you can make a lot more sugar if your uppermost leaves don't completely shade the lowest ones), and reduced water loss (the sun can't bake your leaves if they just keep on quaking). 🔎 While Quaking Aspen can seem few and far between within the park, you can most easily find them along the Rim Trail between Sunset and Sunrise Points and the Southern Scenic Drive to Rainbow Point. They can quickly become abundant in recently burned areas, as they grow quickly from dormant clonal root systems once the trees that previously shaded them are removed. 🍂 Some of the best color displays will be found on roads leading to the park, such as Highways 14 and 143 to the west and Highway 12 along Boulder Mountain to the east. A bit further east in the Fishlake National Forest is the "Pando" or "Trembling Giant", a clonal colony of Quaking Aspen covering 108 acres; it's among the oldest living things and is collectively the heaviest living organism on Earth (but you know it can still dance)! 🎥 NPS Video shows a tree with white branches and green leaves swiveling easily in the breeze. The background is a landscape of red rock slopes and cliffs. [No sound.] #MicroMonday NPS Photos/Peter Densmore (pd)