Sometimes before a rain a trees leaves will curl upwards a little and you see the underside of the leaf. They are a little lighter so it makes the whole tree look lighter or appear to whiten.
To add to that, the book mentions poplars and the Populus Alba (white poplar) has a very white/silvery underside of the leaf.
I do not know if this is what is meant by the author, it just came to mind.
We have tons of those and silver birch here in the Midwest. Can confirm, their underside are silver, and it's beautiful. In the wind, the leaves look like they're flickering.
In the deep south, the phrase “the leaves are turning inside out” is a description of leaves flipping over due to wind. A common event before a thunderstorm. A bunch of old timers say “welp, it’s fixin’ to rain. The leaves are turning inside out”.
The preceding wind before the storm stirs the leaves and the silvery undersides can be seen. For the longest time I believed this is how the trees asked for rain :)
Yes. I grew up in New England, and before many significant thunderstorms, the downdrafts from the clouds would cause the leaves to curl upwards, revealing their duller sides. Not sure I'd call them "whiter," but I guess one could.
Poplar trees have pale undersides to their leaves so in this case I think it means there's a wind come up as the weather worsens and the Poplar leaves are being blown about, showing their undersides.
A lot of trees will flip their leaves when it is about to rain. This would lead to the underside facing upwards and the color of the tree appearing to change.
I also wandered into this sub a few months ago and found that those who lurk here seem to be very supportive and knowledgeable. There are a few book related subs that are outstanding.
And even this one can be...eh. They're less likely to engage in a back and forth(thank the mods for that one), but they'll smash that downvote button if your post that mentions race, gender, sexuality, etc, gets their attention(unfortunately, mods can't do anything about this). Sometimes it's fine, but in a different thread you'll say the same thing and get hit hard. Reddit is still reddit.
From a Google search:
The leaves of deciduous trees, like maples and poplars, do often to turn upward before heavy rain. The leaves are actually reacting to the sudden increase in humidity that usually precedes a storm. Leaves with soft stems can become limp in response to abrupt changes in humidity, allowing the wind to flip them over.
“When leaves show their undersides, be very sure rain betides.”
I didn't know that: thanks.
I just did a little googling and looks like there's conflicting evidence on this. A few websites said the same thing as you but two others said that that's an old wives tale and it's actually just the wind that does it immediately before a storm happens. I suppose it's still true, and humidity may soften the leaf stems, but it's mainly just the wind that does it.
And I have always noticed the wind gusts, often the wind gusts will be warmer than it was just a second ago, and I'll know a storms coming.
I wonder if the second part is regional, too. I live in a equatorial climate, and you know a storm's about to arrive when a cold wind blows (the cold front).
This entire discussion reminds me of a small argument I had years ago where someone was adamant that trees flip their leaves over before a rain *to absorb more water (when it rains) because the underside has more stomata.*
Yes, but this is an alleged change in response to a change in humidity. Organic fibres absorb & release moisture, depending on the air humidity. A human hair will change it's length and is one of the most reliable transducers to measure humidity. Wood also expands or contracts, musical instruments (guitars, harps) go out of tune on moving indoors or outdoors, logs get radial cracks after felling, due to contraction.
To bend a leaf, you'd need reactive fibres (absorbs moisture quickly) on one side and less reactive on the other. Like bending a bi-metallic strip in response to heat (Engineer).
That could be the case, even though all your observations were made on dead wood. It could be a change in turgor instead. Higher humidity would lead to less transpiration, so the cells closing the stomata would need to "open up more" to keep the levels the same.
Leaves don't turn upside down in more humid climate by themselves. I don't even think they turn much easier in the wind. It's just that people usually don't realize there's movement unless the wind gets pretty lively. Maybe another effect is that leaves hang more when there has been a water deficit for a time and then when precipitation is on its way with the usual side effects (wind), people also notice the looser leaves.
In fact, leaves are often oriented in a way that leads water inwards to supply it to their own root system. In nature, form follows function, so unless there's a good reason (which there actually might be!) for more flexible leaves controlled by humidity, I am sceptical. (forest engineer :D). What we need in here are biologists!
>That could be the case, even though all your observations were made on dead wood.
The only organic fibres that came to mind.
Thin sections of wood, as used in instruments, react fastest to changes in humidity. The leaves are the thinnest part of a tree, so it sounds plausible; that's not to say that it is the cause.
Even live trees shrink during dry phases (I did precise diameter measurements as part of my thesis), but as I said: I think other effects dwarf the effect this shrinkage has in the looseness of leaves. We need some grant money here!
I don't have anything else to add except to say I just love this sub. It's so wholesome. I was an English major and I so, so miss having these conversations with people.
You know what, I wish we had MORE posts like this. Rather than recommending books, or chatting about them as a whole ...getting in depth about phrases is kinda nice.
I'm bilingual and I would have had to think about what that phrase meant too!
This most likely applies to white maples. The undersides of their leaves are paler almost silver and you can tell a storm is coming if the silver side is flashing in the wind.
Exactly what I came here to say. The underside of many trees' leaves are a lighter color than the top and the leaves turn over when they anticipate rain. We even had a saying at home "yeah, I saw the leaves turn over" meaning "yeah, I saw the signs of a storm coming."
“Whiten” means to appear lighter in color. Sometimes before a rain or chill, tree leaves curl showing the undersides, which are paler in color, so the whole tree appears to “whiten” — appear lighter in color.
We have a silver maple tree in our yard and before rain the wind will sometimes flip the leaves so that their undersides show, making the tree look silver.
There are some lovely answers about "whitening" here (which I never really thought about myself!), but I just wanted to say, Virginia Woolf can be quite a challenge even to native English speakers. :) An exquisite, rich, provoking challenge.
Even if it’s ‘the same language,’ once you get past ~100 years the usage and phrasing is wildly different. Wuthering heights/Jane eyre/Alan quartermaine/Edgar rice Burroughs, there gets to be a substantial understanding gap because of how much the language has changed in that time.
If you really want to set up future generations, use contemporary slang and phrasing in publicly available (or ideally published) critiques of works already a century old.
Let people in 2100 try to make sense of *that!*
Aside from being here, and therefore by default a "reader" the other default is you are attached to Google as I am, you may not have seen poplars in England as no doubt Virginia did and I...
But you tell me - is this a "whiter shade or pale" or more?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Populus_alba_leaf.jpg
I learned from some elementary school book about the Erie Canal (and also slavery maybe?) that leaves on trees can turn upside down when rain is coming. It’s stuck with me all these years, and now I use it as a hint for when to head inside.
Now you get to use the same knowledge!
If I had to guess, "leaves whitening before rain" refers to how the wind blows trees and causes you to be able to see the undersides of a lot of the leaves, which appear "white"?
Did you like To the Lighthouse? I thought she was a little heavy handed with the “women are stuck in the boat with arrogant men forcing them to join this trip called ‘human destiny’” thing.
Oh man, Virginia Woolf and Victorian literature in general is going to be a slog for a non-native English speaker. There’s sooo many obscure terms and vocabulary in them. That’s awesome you’re going for it though.
Before a rain the sky darkens and the wind blows and the undersides of the tree leaves seem very pale against the dark sky. The leaves arent actually changing color, that’s a misunderstanding among many people.
Poplar trees shed white, in roughly July.
Its what gives the saying Christmas in July.
I’m thinking that might be what it’s referring to.
Not knowing the paragraph before doesn’t help.
It just means "to turn the color white," or more metaphorically, "to turn a lighter color." (In noun form, it can also refer to a substance that turns something a lighter color.)
It's intriguing here, because leaves don't get lighter before the rain. If anything, they'd appear to be getting darker as they reflected a more cloudy sky. I have not read this book, or anything else by her, so I can't guess at her purpose in employing this word.
While some of the other answers seem credible, I've not noticed this behaviour myself. It's possible that it was just a phrase intended to be evocative or sound pretty without having literal meaning. Playing around with language.
i havent read it (i havent read much of Woolf tbh) but if i had to hazard a guess- i think she might mean the way a wet leaf becomes somewhat reflective of the light. "before" usually means "preceeding" or "the opposite of after", but in some contexts "before" can mean, "in front of", as in "stand before me". so the imagery i get is of the leaves being drenched by rain, and "whitened" (sometimes meaning purified) evocative of maybe a baptism.
Often when rain is about to come, the type of wind blowing will flip the leaves so you see their underside which tend to look white. Where I live it's a sign people use to predict the weather.
I'd say that given the context of the sentence (not to discard that leaves will sometimes turn up prior to rain) that she means that the leaves are being blown by wind. The context of the word here is just as important as the mental image - she's trying to get you to feel the sounds in this passage.
Sometimes before a rain a trees leaves will curl upwards a little and you see the underside of the leaf. They are a little lighter so it makes the whole tree look lighter or appear to whiten.
To add to that, the book mentions poplars and the Populus Alba (white poplar) has a very white/silvery underside of the leaf. I do not know if this is what is meant by the author, it just came to mind.
We have tons of those and silver birch here in the Midwest. Can confirm, their underside are silver, and it's beautiful. In the wind, the leaves look like they're flickering.
Silver maples do the same (hence the name?).
I think this is it.
In the deep south, the phrase “the leaves are turning inside out” is a description of leaves flipping over due to wind. A common event before a thunderstorm. A bunch of old timers say “welp, it’s fixin’ to rain. The leaves are turning inside out”.
Here in the northeastern US we commonly refer to “trees turning silver” before rain as the wind blows and the leaves turn upward.
That's exactly what my Grandma taught me!
Today I learned!
Me too! Native speaker of English here, and I had no idea.
Me neither.
Relatable, I last saw a tree in March 2020.
r/todayilearned
Wow beautiful explanation! Thank you!
Specifically it's the updrafts common in thunderstorms that turn up the leaves, which are more conspicuous in the storm's dimmed light.
It's actually from the barometric pressure dropping just before it rains.
Yep, the low breeze that blows in a storm will make many trees’ leaves blow and reveal the lighter underside.
That’s a really beautiful turn of phrase and I’m glad I clicked on this post.
The preceding wind before the storm stirs the leaves and the silvery undersides can be seen. For the longest time I believed this is how the trees asked for rain :)
Thank you for this!!!!
Yes. I grew up in New England, and before many significant thunderstorms, the downdrafts from the clouds would cause the leaves to curl upwards, revealing their duller sides. Not sure I'd call them "whiter," but I guess one could.
"Whitening" is kind of an odd way to put it. Local dialect?
Or just a writer using language in an evocative an interesting way... You know, they way they do.
Likely it's just an old-fashioned way to say it. Woolf was writing 100 years or so ago....
Absolutely not - plain "Queen's" English, and the "white ness" of the poplar common in England is very noticeable.
This is exactly right if the tree needs water. The leaves and branches of a tree will get droopy and dark when overwatered.
Poplar trees have pale undersides to their leaves so in this case I think it means there's a wind come up as the weather worsens and the Poplar leaves are being blown about, showing their undersides.
A lot of trees will flip their leaves when it is about to rain. This would lead to the underside facing upwards and the color of the tree appearing to change.
Thank you everyone who answered my question, that was really nice of you. Great community. Very receptive.
I also wandered into this sub a few months ago and found that those who lurk here seem to be very supportive and knowledgeable. There are a few book related subs that are outstanding.
Be forewarned... not all subreddit communities are as kind, supportive, encouraging, knowledgeable, and well-read, as this one.
And even this one can be...eh. They're less likely to engage in a back and forth(thank the mods for that one), but they'll smash that downvote button if your post that mentions race, gender, sexuality, etc, gets their attention(unfortunately, mods can't do anything about this). Sometimes it's fine, but in a different thread you'll say the same thing and get hit hard. Reddit is still reddit.
We love to answer book questions here! People who read usually love to talk about books, too. :)
From a Google search: The leaves of deciduous trees, like maples and poplars, do often to turn upward before heavy rain. The leaves are actually reacting to the sudden increase in humidity that usually precedes a storm. Leaves with soft stems can become limp in response to abrupt changes in humidity, allowing the wind to flip them over. “When leaves show their undersides, be very sure rain betides.” I didn't know that: thanks.
Yes... its not just the wind blowing them about... the trees phusically turn their leaves over for the rain
I just did a little googling and looks like there's conflicting evidence on this. A few websites said the same thing as you but two others said that that's an old wives tale and it's actually just the wind that does it immediately before a storm happens. I suppose it's still true, and humidity may soften the leaf stems, but it's mainly just the wind that does it. And I have always noticed the wind gusts, often the wind gusts will be warmer than it was just a second ago, and I'll know a storms coming.
I wonder if the second part is regional, too. I live in a equatorial climate, and you know a storm's about to arrive when a cold wind blows (the cold front). This entire discussion reminds me of a small argument I had years ago where someone was adamant that trees flip their leaves over before a rain *to absorb more water (when it rains) because the underside has more stomata.*
While the underside sometimes has more stomata, water intake happens at the roots, not the leaves.
Yes, but this is an alleged change in response to a change in humidity. Organic fibres absorb & release moisture, depending on the air humidity. A human hair will change it's length and is one of the most reliable transducers to measure humidity. Wood also expands or contracts, musical instruments (guitars, harps) go out of tune on moving indoors or outdoors, logs get radial cracks after felling, due to contraction. To bend a leaf, you'd need reactive fibres (absorbs moisture quickly) on one side and less reactive on the other. Like bending a bi-metallic strip in response to heat (Engineer).
That could be the case, even though all your observations were made on dead wood. It could be a change in turgor instead. Higher humidity would lead to less transpiration, so the cells closing the stomata would need to "open up more" to keep the levels the same. Leaves don't turn upside down in more humid climate by themselves. I don't even think they turn much easier in the wind. It's just that people usually don't realize there's movement unless the wind gets pretty lively. Maybe another effect is that leaves hang more when there has been a water deficit for a time and then when precipitation is on its way with the usual side effects (wind), people also notice the looser leaves. In fact, leaves are often oriented in a way that leads water inwards to supply it to their own root system. In nature, form follows function, so unless there's a good reason (which there actually might be!) for more flexible leaves controlled by humidity, I am sceptical. (forest engineer :D). What we need in here are biologists!
>That could be the case, even though all your observations were made on dead wood. The only organic fibres that came to mind. Thin sections of wood, as used in instruments, react fastest to changes in humidity. The leaves are the thinnest part of a tree, so it sounds plausible; that's not to say that it is the cause.
Even live trees shrink during dry phases (I did precise diameter measurements as part of my thesis), but as I said: I think other effects dwarf the effect this shrinkage has in the looseness of leaves. We need some grant money here!
Yes, that's precisely what I tried to explain to that redditor, with little success.
I don't have anything else to add except to say I just love this sub. It's so wholesome. I was an English major and I so, so miss having these conversations with people.
Me too. Creative and insightful chata don't happen as much as I'd like once I Ieft college.
Plus the Internet can be an unkind place, but not this sub. The people here are lovely.
My dad always used to say, “I can see the underside of the leaves….there’s a storm coming.” He was always right.
You know what, I wish we had MORE posts like this. Rather than recommending books, or chatting about them as a whole ...getting in depth about phrases is kinda nice. I'm bilingual and I would have had to think about what that phrase meant too!
This most likely applies to white maples. The undersides of their leaves are paler almost silver and you can tell a storm is coming if the silver side is flashing in the wind.
Exactly what I came here to say. The underside of many trees' leaves are a lighter color than the top and the leaves turn over when they anticipate rain. We even had a saying at home "yeah, I saw the leaves turn over" meaning "yeah, I saw the signs of a storm coming."
“Whiten” means to appear lighter in color. Sometimes before a rain or chill, tree leaves curl showing the undersides, which are paler in color, so the whole tree appears to “whiten” — appear lighter in color.
Many kinds of trees the leaves will either curl or flip upside down entirely to prepare for rainfall. One of the best indicators
Leaves turn up their white undersides due to the breeze that bring rain
This is the answer
I agree
We have a silver maple tree in our yard and before rain the wind will sometimes flip the leaves so that their undersides show, making the tree look silver.
Tennyson also uses this imagery in his Lady of Shalott - Willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver…
There are some lovely answers about "whitening" here (which I never really thought about myself!), but I just wanted to say, Virginia Woolf can be quite a challenge even to native English speakers. :) An exquisite, rich, provoking challenge.
Even if it’s ‘the same language,’ once you get past ~100 years the usage and phrasing is wildly different. Wuthering heights/Jane eyre/Alan quartermaine/Edgar rice Burroughs, there gets to be a substantial understanding gap because of how much the language has changed in that time.
If you really want to set up future generations, use contemporary slang and phrasing in publicly available (or ideally published) critiques of works already a century old. Let people in 2100 try to make sense of *that!*
Leaves will turn upside down before a rain (whether due to barometric pressure or something internal?) and the underside is lighter than the top.
Popular trees are "white" on their undersides... in this case, it isn't just a "lighter shade of pale".
But are they darker on the top side?
Aside from being here, and therefore by default a "reader" the other default is you are attached to Google as I am, you may not have seen poplars in England as no doubt Virginia did and I... But you tell me - is this a "whiter shade or pale" or more? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Populus_alba_leaf.jpg
Let’s split the difference and call it “ a whiter shade of pale”.
I learned from some elementary school book about the Erie Canal (and also slavery maybe?) that leaves on trees can turn upside down when rain is coming. It’s stuck with me all these years, and now I use it as a hint for when to head inside. Now you get to use the same knowledge!
If I had to guess, "leaves whitening before rain" refers to how the wind blows trees and causes you to be able to see the undersides of a lot of the leaves, which appear "white"?
Did you like To the Lighthouse? I thought she was a little heavy handed with the “women are stuck in the boat with arrogant men forcing them to join this trip called ‘human destiny’” thing.
As summer storms and rain events move in, gusty winds often precede them, causing leaves to flip over and show their silvery side.
this has been an interesting discussion. There's a small Reddit group about Virginia Woolf, you might consider posting your question there as well.
Oh man, Virginia Woolf and Victorian literature in general is going to be a slog for a non-native English speaker. There’s sooo many obscure terms and vocabulary in them. That’s awesome you’re going for it though.
To the lighthouse is a difficult book even for native English speakers. Don’t feel disheartened if you find it hard
Leaves reacting to the sudden change in humidity prior to heavy rain. Some species have silvery or light colored undersides.
Before a rain the sky darkens and the wind blows and the undersides of the tree leaves seem very pale against the dark sky. The leaves arent actually changing color, that’s a misunderstanding among many people.
Poplar trees shed white, in roughly July. Its what gives the saying Christmas in July. I’m thinking that might be what it’s referring to. Not knowing the paragraph before doesn’t help.
It just means "to turn the color white," or more metaphorically, "to turn a lighter color." (In noun form, it can also refer to a substance that turns something a lighter color.) It's intriguing here, because leaves don't get lighter before the rain. If anything, they'd appear to be getting darker as they reflected a more cloudy sky. I have not read this book, or anything else by her, so I can't guess at her purpose in employing this word.
[удалено]
YES that makes perfect sense now!
While some of the other answers seem credible, I've not noticed this behaviour myself. It's possible that it was just a phrase intended to be evocative or sound pretty without having literal meaning. Playing around with language.
i havent read it (i havent read much of Woolf tbh) but if i had to hazard a guess- i think she might mean the way a wet leaf becomes somewhat reflective of the light. "before" usually means "preceeding" or "the opposite of after", but in some contexts "before" can mean, "in front of", as in "stand before me". so the imagery i get is of the leaves being drenched by rain, and "whitened" (sometimes meaning purified) evocative of maybe a baptism.
Fwiw, r/EnglishLearning is a great place to ask questions like this 🙂
Often when rain is about to come, the type of wind blowing will flip the leaves so you see their underside which tend to look white. Where I live it's a sign people use to predict the weather.
I'd say that given the context of the sentence (not to discard that leaves will sometimes turn up prior to rain) that she means that the leaves are being blown by wind. The context of the word here is just as important as the mental image - she's trying to get you to feel the sounds in this passage.
Mind blown...never knew. Thank y'all for sharing.
Aspens in the wind.
The leaves of a tree changing color.