Vibrant Autumnal period (Ruska)

Ruska intensifies day by day in early September as the nights get cooler from swamps to fell highlands. The colourful splendour is at its most spectacular around the middle of September, and sometimes at the end of the month.

This phenomenon starts when the daylight hours decrease and the weather gets colder. Plants start to prepare for the long winter, the chlorophyll starts to move from the leaves into the branches, trunk and roots and this makes the colour agents in the leaves glow. The more the night time temperatures fall below zero and the drier the weather, the more vibrant the array of colour. The birch turns a gentle shade of yellow, aspen turns red, and the leaves of blueberry and bog bilberry shrubs turn bright red.

While people love to admire the vibrant ruska, animals find it rather daunting. Forest birds disappear into the tangled thickets and brushwood of softwood forests to hide, and fish sink into hollows.