Environment : Notes about your surroundings.

BARE TREES: Contrary to popular belief, Orange County does have seasons. Local residents looking for proof need only travel to nearby canyons and watercourses, where they will find that the county’s native deciduous trees--sycamores, cottonwoods, alders, willows and elderberrys--have finally lost their leaves.

“The cold weather and the last winds finally did them in,” said Mike Evans, owner of Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano and an active member of the California Native Plant Society. The leaves will begin to return in late February and early March, he said.

“It’s a short dormant season, compared to other regions, but it is a season,” Evans said.