Suddenly the scales have fallen from my eyes and I have seen Japanese maples for the first time. They have surrounded me forever, but now, after the clean-up from Hurricane Sandy, when so much has been swept away, the Japanese maples seem to stand out in an especially stark and beautiful way.\u00a0 Known botanically as Acer palmatum, Japanese maple comes in all sizes\u2014from tiny little specimens no more than a few feet tall, to graceful trees that grow to twenty feet. Their leaves are deeply dissected\u2014what my daughter used to call \u201cfingery\u201d\u2014and delicate.\u00a0 When they are painted with red, russet or orange, as many are now, they are absolutely magnificent; the branches and leaves creating glorious mounds, like giant chrysanthemums.<\/p>\n
I love flowers, but now on my daily walks, I notice colorful leaves and fruits. With apologies to Dylan Thomas, I think of these bright beacons as Nature\u2019s way of raging against the dying of the light before the winter solstice. The truth is less romantic– most of the plants color up in response to the shorter days of fall.\u00a0 No dying light\u2014no glowing leaves.\u00a0 Nature has a wonderful way of compensating for seasonal change.<\/p>\n
The other day I was parking my car in a municipal lot behind a beauty salon when I caught sight of the gorgeous and somewhat startling berries of purple beautyberry or Callicarpa dichotoma. The berries are amethyst purple, a unique and surprising shade at this time of year. They are not shy, either, but are borne in profusion on the stems. The bushes can grow up to be three or four feet tall, with long, slender, somewhat arching branches. Nowhere near as showy as the fruits, the summer flowers are also lilac. There is no reason, other than tedious devotion to the same ten shrub varieties, for not including purple beautyberry in home landscapes.<\/p>\n
Near a nondescript single-story office building, I saw a lovely display of Euonymus latifolia, a tall, vase-shaped shrub that is distinguished by both brilliant red fall leaves and equally brilliant scarlet fruits that hang from the branches, looking much like cherries. I walk by the nondescript office building several times a week, and as I recall from last year, the fruits persist after the leaves have departed.\u00a0 Without these three gaudy euonymus, the nondescript office building would be extremely depressing; with them, it is something I look forward to passing on my walks.<\/p>\n
Some people\u2019s hearts sing when they see flowering dogwoods in the spring.\u00a0 I never scoff at a good looking flower, much less a tree full of them, but dogwoods do not make my heart sing in the same way that flowering horse chestnuts or tulip trees do.\u00a0 In the fall, however, the sight of dark red dogwood leaves hanging from the branches provides the heart thumping response missing in April.\u00a0 Suddenly the trees appear to be clad in stately velvet instead of frilly dotted Swiss.\u00a0 This makes them more regal in the fullness of the year than in its youth.\u00a0 I like that.<\/p>\n
The blue fruits of Boston ivy, or Parthenocissus tricuspidata, are not as flashy as those of purple beautyberry, but they are distinctive at this time of the year.\u00a0 There is a short wall of rosy old brick not far from my house, which might once have been part of a longer expanse.\u00a0 In the growing season, the wall is covered with the lobed, dark green leaves of vigorous Boston ivy.\u00a0 Now, in November, most of the leaves have gone the way of all things, but the dark blue berries remain, clinging to the vines.\u00a0 They bear a resemblance to small wild grapes, but are not borne in the same kinds of clusters.<\/p>\n
In my own yard, the oakleaf hydrangea or Hydrangea quercifolia has colored its leaves in a dark red reminiscent of dogwood leaves. As the name implies, the leaves look like oak foliage, except much larger, and they are one of the glories of the genus.\u00a0 In late spring and early summer, they play second fiddle to the large, conical flowerheads, which start out white and then age to pink.\u00a0 Now, having cast off those foolish things, the hydrangeas have decked themselves out before winter. In addition to looking lovely on the bush, the leaves hold up well in fall arrangements.<\/p>\n
In the orgy of spring plant buying, thinking about fall color is a little like considering the benefits AARP membership at your college graduation.\u00a0 That is why it is so important right now to make some kind of note about plants like purple beautyberry or Euonymus latifolia.\u00a0 Write something down in your old-fashioned garden diary or your online garden planner.\u00a0 Find a smart phone app that lets you see the plants and will remind you of their existence at the right time.\u00a0 Whatever your device\u2014ancient or modern\u2014use it to help you remember that fall comes back every year.\u00a0 Color in the fall landscape makes the thought of a long winter a little more bearable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Suddenly the scales have fallen from my eyes and I have seen Japanese maples for the first time. They have surrounded me forever, but now, after the clean-up from Hurricane Sandy, when so much has been swept away, the Japanese maples seem to stand out in an especially stark and beautiful way.\u00a0 Known botanically as … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,5],"tags":[470,472,471,473,267,469,474],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-winter","tag-acer-palmatum","tag-beautyberry","tag-callicarpa-dichoma","tag-euonymus-latifolia","tag-fall-gardening","tag-japanese-maple","tag-parthenocissus-tricuspidata"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":693,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}