girls mature faster than boys

I've got boys in fifth grade, so I notice these things.

But I'm talking trees. Check this out! The ash trees around the neighborhood are once again revealing their gender. The boy ash trees, like the one on the left of this picture, are still deep green in color, but the girl ash trees, like the one on the right, are much lighter now.



Neat, right? If we look closer, we can see that some of the lighter color is coming from the large clusters of fruit that are hanging from the branches. They were always this paler green color. But that's not all that's causing this effect. A lot of the leaves on the female ash trees are turning yellow now. This is just not happening yet on the male trees.



So what's going on? Are the female trees really going to change sooner and maybe even lose those leaves sooner? Is the difference due to the fact that these trees are using up more nutrients to develop those samaras and seeds? Also, this might be a coincidence, but in my neighborhood all the female ash trees are smaller than the male ash trees. I wonder if the seed production might affect their growth.