Autumn pear tree leaves of many colors

While on a brisk walk two weeks ago or so, I came upon a series of trees whose white flowers had caught my attention several months ago while I was doing a spring blooms shoot.

Now these trees' leaves were just past their autumn prime, and from afar they looked mostly orange to me. But as I came closer, the leaves actually were of different colors -- reds, oranges, yellows ... and even a very dark burgundy.

I was intrigued, so I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone. There were a few individual leaves on the pavement next to the tree that jumped out at me, too ... because their color(s) stood out from all the other leaves around them. A friend of mine who I showed these pictures to help identify the source tree believes they are from a Bradford pear tree, also known as a flower pear tree.

I did one thing different in this post than I have done in the past. I made no edits on these photos; they're right out of the phone. Ordinarily I try to sharpen my images before posting, but I didn't do so this time.

One post planning note: Since I started composing this post two weeks ago, the landscape around us has changed dramatically: We had two days of snow from Winter Storm Diego, a couple days of rain that washed away all of the snow, and a couple days of upper 50s temperatures.

There's little else to say about this post, so I'll just get right to the pictures, starting below with a shot of the source trees from a distance. As always, to bring up a larger version of a photo, simply click on it. That's particularly helpful if you access the blog using a mobile device.