What follows is why so many on the Hog Forum regard me as a jerk. It does not bother me one bit. When one is truly a master of your discipline then one learns to deal with the envious regards from the lesser practitioners in ones field.

The effect is generally in the realms of that category of what you are calling bokeh, but it is merely an effect and not the 'reason' for what you are seeing. There is nothing malfunctioning with your lens that this image is displaying.

Now the boring didactic part of this story/explanation. Everyone has heard of the golden means, also the Fibonacci principle. That Fibonacci principle is attributed to an Italian story about I guy who championed the principle of what is also referred to as the golden means. Essentially the golden means is a FOUNDATION of the active principle that governs the way our world works. The growth, the PATTERN of that growth in the natural world follows this interesting pattern. The way leaves grow on a stem and branch from weeds to giant elm trees, that pattern is followed. It is encoded in the life structure from a single leaf and the spiral of a snails shell. So there is an inherent pattern created by the plants leaves and the pattern you are seeing in this display, be it called bokeh or golden means it is the outcome of the inherent pattern that leaves exhibit as they break up the beams of light flowing through the tree's leaf pattern.

An additional didactic reference for this can be found by looking up a rather unique photographic lens made by Schneider called the Imagon. To achieve the 'soft focus' effects of the Imagon a device is installed in the front of the lens called an 'airy diffusion disk'. This is the part of the Imagon lens that creates effects like those you see in your image sun light through the tree's levees. In some images where a direct light source is shown in the photograph, the airy diffusion disk may show as a cluster of tiny points of light as seen as circles if the lens disk is dialed fully open or as partial crescents if closed down.

I found several images associated with the Imagon lens. The first shows the effect in the Christmas tree lights, especially to the right of the image. The second image shows the extreme effect most call bokeh and are the repeating pattern of diffraction with interference of light waves generated by the shaping pattern by a simple lens. The third images shows the Imagon airy diffusion disk and the light pattern it generates when in use. The last image is of an Imagon lens with it's airy diffusion discs.

To end this, the pattern you are seeing is the natural patterning of sunlight as it passes through leaves that interfere with that light and are creating a 'pattern' that is inherently made up of a pattern that you are seeing based on the golden means. Your natural and biological response to this pattern is built into the biological structure of your own body. Congratulation! You are a living being who for a moment has connected to the natural structure of the world in which you are part! I know, way to Pagan for the Hog! LOL!!!

All the images shown are from the internet, they are not my photographs.