Autumn light is different from summer light: more golden, as light rays lengthen, with longer shadows.  While there is time, and while the blue skies we have enjoyed all growing season fade to gray as winter beckons, go forth and catch some slanted sun-rays of autumn.  Enjoy the full life of fall.  

  The past few days have brought out the colors of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida), often neglected when the best fall foliage plants are listed. As the lead picture shows it is wonderful now, and its fat flower buds promise springtime reprisals.

  Next, enjoy the...

{Photos and text for this bgyl-alert are provided by Joe Cochran, the Curator of OSU’s Secrest Arboretum at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster.}

 

  The fruits of purple beauty berry  (Callicarpa dichotoma) are among the most splendid of the fall-fruiting shrubs.  On arching branches, small delicate fruits appear to be glossy pearls that have been dipped in a lilac-violet varnish.  Against the light-green foliage their beauty cannot go unnoticed.  Growing 4-5 ft. with a slightly larger spread, the tips often reach to the ground. A...

  Fall is for foliage, but also for – fruits.  We sometimes miss this for landscape plants, blinded by apples and apple cider and the final harvests from summer gardens. Yet there is much to enjoy.  So here is a short view of a few of The Fruits of Orrville, Ohio (Wayne County) with a finale the finale from Otterbein University in Franklin County.

 

  We started above with the bubble-gum colored fruits of Symphoricarpos. I am not sure of the species or cultivar of this particular street-planted beauty, though possibly it is Amethyst™ Symphoricarpos x...

  We are entering that world-class time of the year for Ohio and the Eastern United States – the time of fall foliage color. Nevertheless, we are receiving numerous calls about what is wrong with their trees, especially honeylocusts; yellowing leaves and all.

  Nothing out of the ordinary – it is simply fall foliage time. Despite our warm temperatures and with it seeming like it is still summer - for trees - fall is proceeding as usual. There are factors of temperature and moisture that affect fall coloration intensity, but the key ingredient for fall color starts in the summer at...

  I once wrote a poem of the seasons of dawnredwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides.  Let us deconstruct, starting with the name of this majestic tree, for as the Chinese philosopher Krishtalka noted: “The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right name.”

  The Latin binomial itself is telling: “meta-sequoia” means “like-sequoia”, and dawnredwoods are related, in the Cupressaceae family, to the true redwoods, Sequoia and Sequoiadendron. The “glyptostrob-oides” refers to another sister genus in the Cupressaceae, Glyptostrobus....

Johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense, family Poaceae) is a non-native perennial grassy weed that is becoming a serious problem in Ohio landscapes and nurseries.

Monday's 19th Annual Bluegrass-Buckeye BYGLive! (BBB) was held at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, KY, where participants viewed the handiwork of the distillery fungus, Baudoinia compniacensis.

  Springtime comes to Autumn in the Eugene and Judy Pouly Domaine and Chatfield tables this evening: we shall be dancing around our Maypoles. No, we have not fast-forwarded the seasons. Instead we are enjoying the fruits of springtime flowers. To the point, ‘Maypole’ crabapple fruits turned into sauce so sweet and yet so sour.

  At Johnson Woods Nature Preserve near Orrville in Wayne County, there are many wonderful plants including towering oaks and beeches and sourgums.  There are birds including barred owls that are a hoot to hear in matched pairs from across the preserve.  This past weekend the fungi were having a real coming out party following recent rains.  Squirrels, including black squirrels, were clucking away. And stinging nettles were fruiting; something I had never noticed before.  

 

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  The Umbrella Magnolia Grove (Magnolia tripetala) at OSU’s Secrest Arboretum in Wooster, for almost a century was a revered place: a protected place from non-lightning rainstorms, a place for rituals of many a kind, a wow place for children, a favorite of now-retired Secrest curator, Ken Cochran.