Autumn in Dunedin

About a month ago, right after we returned from the trip to Queenstown to see the fall colors, we took some photos of Dunedin to show the more muted fall colors here. I'm just now getting around to posting a few of them. The first photo shows the view from our back deck of what I call the wall of trees on the opposite side of our valley from our house. I look at the wall of trees from my office window as well. Now, a month later, all those gold leaves have fallen off. But there are lots of green trees remaining, and they are not conifers. I recently learned that only two or three of the species of trees native to New Zealand are deciduous. The town belt, a belt of forest around Dunedin, mostly stays green all winter, and the wall of trees outside my office window is mostly green as well. There are few bare trees, but lots of trees with dark green leaves.

I've said before that we live in a valley that goes north and a little east out of town. There's another valley that goes northwest out of town and follows the course of the Leith River (commony called the Waters of Leith, a Scottish way of speaking that comes down from the Scottish founders of Dunedin). Our church is a couple miles up Leith Valley, so one Sunday in April I rode my bike to church and took some photos on the way. Here's a picture of the Waters of Leith with a few fall colors and a few trees that aren't deciduous. The trees up on the hills are conifers, but the green trees in the foreground are leafy trees that don't lose their leaves in the fall.

Below is another nice autumn photo taken on the way to church. Again you can see all the non-deciduous leafy trees on the hillside.

Dave took the next one on a sunny Saturday in April. That's the iconic clock tower building on the campus of the University of Otago, where I teach.