October 21, 2007 - Old Gold Welcome to the Nature Notebook. From Canada south to Delaware, autumn brings a bit of gold to forests. The round, quivering leaves of quaking aspen glow like golden sunlight each autumn. Aspen trees are known as ecological pioneers, one of the first tree species to establish itself after a disturbance by fire or landslide. These sun-tolerant trees grow quickly, but live only a short 40 or 50 years. And yet, an aspen grove could be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. What we know as aspen trees — trunk, branches and leaves — are really clones sent up from a well-established root system. Weighing in at 32 tons to the acre, these root systems cover tens to over one hundred acres underground. Individual aspen trunks share water and nutrients taken in by the massive root systems. So that autumn gold could just be the result of centuries of growth. This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.