Fall Color, Part Deux

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  We have visited fall color themes with several recent bygl-alerts (http://bygl.osu.edu/node/612; http://bygl.osu.edu/node/603; http://bygl.osu.edu/node/602), and as the season progresses it just keeps getting richer. Following are some additional Season of 2016 features. And the lead picture above, though it looks like it comes from the Smokies or from Almost Heaven, is just from my backyard, with fall foliage rising from the strawberry fields forever of the Rittman Orchard to layers of Wayne County maples and such.

  Next up is from a large flowering dogwood in my front yard, and though lower branches are dying on this elderly tree, it still provides outstanding spring flowers and now backlit fall foliage of great beauty. Lower branches with poor drying conditions are succumbing to dogwood anthracnose disease.

 

dogwood fall color

  

  Next to it is a rather untended winterberry holly, with tendrils of Virginia creeper intermingled, but providing nice contrasts to the winterberry fruits. Remember, to get these fruits you need a male winterberry with synchronized flowering with the female seen here.

 

Winterberry holly and Virginia creeper fall colors

  More subtle than reds, at least for now, is the salmon pink fall foliage of the three-flowered maple. This is one of my favorite trees and its fall foliage feature is one of the reasons. Soon these pinks will turn to oranges. What a deal.

 

fall color of three flowered maple

 

  Katsuratree is one of my favorites and fall foliage color ranges from lighter shades of pale to a range of yellows, to on some trees a light apricot to persimmon orange. I owe reading Michael Dirr’s “Manual of Landscape Plants” and listening to Kenny Cochran at Secrest Arboretum telling of the fallen leaves and their aromas of crème brulee or toasted marshmallows, though these somewhat subtle smells are not yet prominent this fall in the Chatscape. Ever a mystery.  

 

katsuratree fall color

 

  As an autumnal bonus: one of our lilacs continues to push out a few out of season blooms. As you read this, imagine the perfume of fresh lilacs, still with us in late October.

 

lilac blooms in Fall!

 

 To the side of our house, red, non-poisonous gumdrops, are the fleshy arils that almost surround yew seeds. These arils are one of the few parts of yews not poisonous, but the seed inside is poisonous, so the prudent thing is to avoid a quick bite.

 

yew arils

 

  Next is the long and winding trunk of sassafras, showing off an array of leaves of yellow, to burnt orange to flaming orange-red.

 

fall foliage and winding trunk of sassafras

 

  Joining this sassafras canopy are two pictures (one from this summer) to one this week with leaves yellowing – of the spinning wheel upper leaf canopies of black walnut.

 

walnut canopy in summer

 

walnut canopy in October in Ohio

 

  Hey, I just realized that all of these pictures above (save the summer walnut pic) came from a mere 15 minutes of picture taking this past Wednesday, all in my, to say the least, laissez-faire Chatscape. Look around you – no tickets for admission needed - the greatest show on Earth is unfolding. Quite a prelude to “Welcome – to the Show” unfolding in Relieveland this coming Tuesday night!

  Oh, yes, one more image, perhaps more appropriate for Halloween: that of a human-plant pairing of exfoliation. The inner needles of white pine and upper pate deforestation of the increasingly glabrous…Joe Boggs. Smooth operator, perhaps not inappropriately for this truly Ohio Buckeye.   

 

white pine and Joe Boggs

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