Question: Why do leaves die even though there is lots of rain?

Pete Etchells answered on 28 Apr 2012:

Trees don’t just need water to survive – they also need light energy from the sun. When winter starts to come, it becomes less efficient for a tree to keep the leaves, when they’re not producing much food. So the leaves fall all off, leaving seeds which will stay in a dormant state until the spring. The tree can then live off reserves of food that the leaves produced in the summer!