Fall Colors

We had a long if not stellar period of fall color this year. It took me so long to get through the pictures that I decided to just lump them all together in one post.

We have a stand of tall straight tulip poplars between our house and the small neighborhood above us. They don't have the glowing brilliance of sugar maples, but when the golden light of late afternoon slants through the yellow leaves the effect is quite beautiful.

On Halloween

The following pictures were taken near or on Halloween as well. The lack of real cold this fall resulted in some firsts. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Japanese flowering apricot near the mailbox turn a muted shade of -- appropriately enough -- apricot.

Hubricht's blue star is known for its golden fall foliage, but this is the first time it's ever had this much color in my garden. I think the leaves usually freeze before they can change.

Dramatically lit by the late afternoon sun. Almost doesn't look real doesn't it, but it is!

Even the most sensitive have to admit that poison ivy has good fall color. Unfortunately, it grows wild here on the farm too and there's a lot of it. The tree with the purple leaves on the right is a sweetgum.

Musclewood (Carpinus caroliniana) often has striking color in the fall. It grows at the edge of a slough next to one of the pastures and all the way down to the creek.

The red maples turned very late this year.

In the middle of November, Red Maples provided a lot of color in the understory of the tulip poplars, by now bare of their leaves.

This is the first time in 13 years I remember seeing color on the serviceberry; usually the leaves just spot and drop. This year they turned a burnished gold color, seen here with sweetgum.

Rosa virginiana has beautiful fall color, starting with yellow and progressing to red and then purple. This is a young plant I put in late this summer.

A few very late flowers on the wood sorrel

A very colorful shrub that I do not know the identity of. It's growing on the bank of the large ditch between the house and the big perennial bed.

The beautyberries have stayed beautiful for a long time. Freezes do them in, so the mild weather has been very good for them.

Two native shrubs have provided beautiful fall color for a long time, sumac and blueberry.

The beautiful scarlet foliage and wine-red fruits of winged sumac.

Here is a perfectly red... blueberry, at the end of October. These are wild bushes that produce abundant tiny sweet berries in June and often have really spectacular color over a very long period of time in the fall. They are very adaptable, growing on dry hillsides as well as practically in the water. They need acid soil and they like the sandy loam here.

Some of the blueberries will simply turn scarlet, while others will turn burgundy, sometimes even with chocolate undertones. Eventually almost all of the blueberries end up bright red.

On Nov. 5th:

Nov. 16th, and still colorful this past weekend.

The last few days several of the blueberries finally lost their scarlet red leaves, but the swamp cyrilla is as colorful as ever.

Swamp cyrilla started to change after our first frost over three weeks ago and has been beautiful ever since.

Standing at the old house site, looking toward the neighbor's pasture. The last of the fall color on the trees from red maples and sweetgums.

Soon the very last of the fall color will be gone, but the loblolly pines and hollies will remain vibrant in the landscape. Time to try to photograph the yellow-Rumped warblers and cedar waxwings chowing down on the wax myrtle berries.