Fall Foliage III

Category
Authors
Published on

  Never-to-be-forgotten fall color continued this past Saturday in Wayne County in northeast Ohio – and I suspect, elsewhere. The red maple (Acer rubrum) above and the other images were all from Saturday morning, November 5, in my yard and the nearby Johnson Woods Nature Preserve near Orrville five miles away.

  Maples held sway in their many iterations, from the luminosity of sugar maples (Acer saccharum) at Johnson Woods, to the unusually foliated hornbeam maple (Acer carpinifolium) in the ChatScape.

 

Sugar maple fall color

 

hornbeam maple fall color

 

  There is also more to come, as the hedge maple (Acer campestre) in my yard is still only halfway yellowed. The compact, shiny leaves of hedge maple are a favorite.  

 

hedge maple tree in November

 

hedge maple fall color

 

  Pin oaks are starting to bronze up…

 

pin oak fall color

 

  …But ginkgoes are still just yellowing, preparing for their near-simultaneous release of gold on some blustery or rainy fall day to come.

 

ginkgo beginning to yellow

 

  Unusually, we have not yet had a hard frost, so this eggplant (Solanum melongena) flower, though a bit wan, is still abloom and foliage is still green. The flower of eggplant reminds us of its relation to tomatoes and potatoes and peppers in the Solanaceae family.

 

eggplant flowers in November

 

Tuliptree, (Lee-ree-oh-den-dron too-lip-iff-er-ah) is not a tree that I think of for fall foliage, but as I looked up Saturday to this small seedling I planted probably not more than 25 years ago, it was wonderfully afire.

 

towering tuliptree with fall color

 

 

tuliptree fall color

 

  Nature: This next-to-last shot is from Johnson Woods and reflects one of the forest types or the eastern U.S., namely a beech-maple forest, here with sugar maple leaves on the ground and American beech leaves (Fagus grandifolia) still on the tree.

 

beech and maple leaves in the woods

 

  Nurture: And finally, though my horticultural nurture amounted to no more than planting, nursery growers selected and propagated this ‘Ogon’ dawnredwood, with golden foliage on the tips through the summer, and an especially graceful soft fall foliage color, starring now.

 

Ogon dawnredwood fall foliage