LEAF
COLOR
May-Oct
After doing the deciduous/evergreen lesson I was wondering whether among broadleaved trees evergreen species were a darker green than deciduous species. To help answer this question I color-copied some pages out of Munsell's Color Charts of Plant Tissues. Even all the color chips at Bob Johnson's paint store were not as good as these charts. You can borrow these from me, 10 copies.
Naturally, the question was not so simple. Color has three attributes, hue, value, and chroma. Which did I care about? Also, the leaves on one tree can vary in color, especially by fall. Which would we measure? People (even adults) vary in their "color aptitude," and some are truly color blind. Can we compare the results of different observers?
It looked like almost all the leaves would have their matching color on the pages called Green-yellow 2.5, Green-yellow 5, and Green-yellow 7.5. Even limiting the field to these three pages left plenty of room for confusion and error in matching colors, i.e. this takes practice. I still think the technique could answer some fun questions, once you practiced it and could get reproducible measurements.
For example, for the original question each observer would record the color (all three attributes) of at least 6 leaves on at least one individual each of as many deciduous and evergreen broadleaved tree species as he could. Then he could compare the two groups in each attribute.