Editorial | Notebook: The A Train to Autumn

Byron Smith for The New York Times

A 4 train headed toward Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx offers great fall views, as do the other subway lines with elevated tracks.

Leaf-watching season in the Northeast is dazzling but fleeting. If you haven't already taken Amtrak's Adirondack train, with its special glass-domed car, up the Hudson Valley and beyond to see forested riverbanks in their coats of many, many colors, you've pretty much missed that chance — the leaves have peaked, and dome car service ends Tuesday.

But if you're in New York City, you don't have to go far — not even to Yonkers — to see leaves that haven't peaked. Get yourself a MetroCard, a cup of coffee and a smartphone with a tree-identification app. And stand clear of the closing doors, please.

From mid-Manhattan, take an outbound train. It could be the A, the 7, the 1, the 4 or the Long Island Rail Road to Jamaica. As long as the line ends up above ground beyond Manhattan (very important), it almost doesn't matter.

Take the A, for instance. It climbs into daylight near Liberty Avenue in Queens on its way to Jamaica Bay and the Rockaways. You see row houses and scrubby street trees — this is definitely not Vermont. But tune out the concrete, brick and asphalt, and soon you won't see the city for the trees: lush, brazen, almost incandescent in the morning sunlight. Over by Aqueduct Racetrack, vines and a dense tree canopy appear to be devouring the platform: green vengeance, soon to turn crimson, ocher, gold.

On the other side of Queens, on the elevated 7 line, the World's Fair grounds form an ample urban woodland. After you cross the verdant Grand Central Parkway (thank you, Robert Moses), turn your back on Citi Field and look south upon the meadows of Flushing. The express inches through a copse of trees, then over the Flushing River, with its old pilings and mud at low tide, and a pair of bonus ducks. You have already seen more leaves than you would have ever expected, from the subway.

But the best is yet to come. On the 4, up and beyond the East Side, past Yankee Stadium and the Kingsbridge Armory, among the brick apartment blocks and rocky outcroppings: stands of stubborn ailanthus and oak, subway platforms choked in blush-red ivy.

The end of the line is a forest: Van Cortlandt Park, one of the city's largest, next to Woodlawn Cemetery, the leafy permanent address of Herman Melville, Miles Davis and Fiorello La Guardia.

Head out of the turnstiles, go up the block, onto a wooded path. Signs tell you of Norway maple, pin oak, sweet gum. And poison ivy, now lustrous red and yellow.

Heading back toward the subway, you pass two workers in helmets and orange vests talking park business. Heedless of trail etiquette, they walk by without a nod, not even looking up. This may be the woods, but it is still the Bronx.

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