The Rosy Buds of May and Beyond

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Janet

Yes, it’s May, and the garden is bursting with fresh spring colour. Greens are still bright, pests haven’t yet made serious inroads, and there’s still a sense of anticipation about what the rest of the spring season holds. And on that note, why shouldn’t it hold some pink? (Especially since I promised you ‘pink for May’ in my 2016 New Year’s resolution!)

The word ‘pink’ is believed to come from the Dutch phrase pinck oogen or “small eyes” and was used to describe flowers of the Dianthus genus that we know as pinks, with their small coloured eyes. Plants like this little Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria) that pops up along my path at the cottage at Lake Muskoka….

….or the common grass pink (Dianthus plumarius), with its deliciously spicy clove perfume and lime-loving ways.

Its use in colour terminology, i.e. ‘pink-coloured’, dates from 1680, referencing the same genus of plants, but increasingly coming to have other meanings and connotations, such as “in the pink” for health, relating to complexion and the 20th century “pink for girls and blue for boys” social construct that saw everything from maternity ward bracelets to toys and furniture divided into two camps. Interestingly, pink and blue are conjoined in Panatone’s 2016 Colour of the Year, which I blogged about a while back.

The use of pink plants in garden design schemes seems to have had its heyday in the 1980s, when pretty pastels and combinations of pink-lavender-purple-blue-silver were popular. That “pink for girls” look subsided considerably over the next few decades, when hot colours, dark foliage schemes and green-on-green designs came into their own. But pink-inflected borders are still lovely, and a hallmark of the June garden, when pink peonies and the complementary blues and purples of lupines, irises and other early-summer perennials create a romantic mood, as they do below at Toronto’s Spadina House.

There are loads of pink-flowered perennials and I’ll tackle some of my favourites another time. But in this blog I want to talk about hardy shrubs and vines with pink flowers. It seems reasonable to do that chronologically, so I’m starting with my favourite pink magnolia, the enchanting and exceptionally early-blooming little ‘Leonard Messel’ Loebner hybrid magnolia. A cross between white-flowered Magnolia kobus and the pink form of star magnolia Magnolia stellata ‘Rosea’, it is very hardy and utterly enchanting, with its starry pink flowers. Put lots of glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii formerly Chionodoxa) under this one!

‘Leonard Messel’ is best in a protected spot away from wind and weather and lovely with the first spring bulbs. However, a killing frost in early spring in colder regions (twice in 10 years in Toronto) will turn those brave flowers brown, so caveat emptor.

Japanese cherry trees (Prunus x yedoensis, P. serrulata, etc.) are an iconic – if fleeting – sign of spring in many parts of the temperate world where sakura flower-watching is enjoyed. In colder regions, like Southern Ontario where I live, the choices are somewhat limited, but there is one that I love for its abundant pale-pink flowering show in late April or early May. Prunus ‘Accolade’, shown below, is a 1952 hybrid from England’s Knapp Hill Nurseries, a cross between a form of Prunus x subhirtella and the very hardy, northern Japanese hill cherry Prunus sargentii, aka ‘Sargent’s cherry’, named for its American collector Charles Sprague Sargent. As a bonus to its flowering, it will also usually turn soft apricot-gold in autumn.

The flowers of ‘Accolade’, below, are exquisite, and arguably the tree is one of the hardiest available for northern gardeners (apart from the early Yoshino cherry, Prunus x yedoensis and the later, double-flowered and rather harsh pink Prunus serrulata ‘Kanzan’). But there’s a little hitch: if winter temperatures flirt with historic lows in the mid-to-low -20s Celsius, the flowers will often blast without opening. Even in a mild winter without excessively low temperatures, if the mercury drops unseasonably in early spring as the buds are plumping up – as it did in Toronto this April – Japanese cherries will not flower profusely; some will not flower at all. But that’s the chance you take.

An early, pink-flowered shrub to consider is Farrer’s viburnum (Viburnum farreri). I have this in my own garden and it sometimes opens in March in an unseasonably warm spring. Even better is the hybrid Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, below, which is a 1934 selection by Bodnant Nursery in Wales of their cross between V. farreri and V. grandiflorum.

‘Dawn’ is also favoured for its early nectar by bees and overwintering butterflies like the mourning cloak.

Rhododendrons are a mainstay of the milder west coast and the warmer regions of the northeast into the Carolinas, but there are many that are perfectly hardy for us here in USDA Zone 5 (Zone 6 Canadian zones). Among the best pinks are the ultra-hardy, small-flowered rhododendrons bred by Weston Nurseries in Massachusetts. Indeed, I once had eleven of these – a combination of Rhododendron ‘Aglow’ and ‘Olga Mezitt’ – in my front garden for a spring show that brought the neighbours around to ooh and ahhh. In time, the prairie perennials I grew for my ‘second act’ in summer crowded and shaded out these spring lovelies – and in truth, they were never happy with the soil, which was essentially alkaline clay. But they’re highly recommended for people who don’t mind the somewhat brash neon colour and can’t bear the thought of cosseting the big-flowered rhododendrons to protect them from winter sunshine and resulting leaf dessication. Look how lovely ‘Olga Mezitt’ was, with its pink tulip and blue forget-me-not companions.

A closeup of the beautiful flower truss of ‘Olga Mezitt’.

And here is ‘Aglow’ at the Montreal Botanical Garden. Spectacular, isn’t it, for a shrub that can survive -30F (-30C) unprotected without bud damage?

The Eastern redbud tree (Cercis canadensis) is one of the most beautiful of the native northeast sylva. It seems like a little miracle that those pea flowers should emerge on bare wood, transforming each limb from drab winter brown to brilliant raspberry-pink. This little grouping of redbuds at the Toronto Botanical Garden includes two pinks, a white-flowered form and the weeping dwarf cultivar ‘Covey’.

A closer look at Eastern redbud at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

And here’s a better look at Cercis canadensis ‘Covey’ (trade name Lavender Twist – and don’t get me going on the misuse of “lavender” as a colour term), which seems like it was born to cascade over this stone wall!
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Moving along through spring, we have the gorgeous tree peonies and interspecific Itoh hybrid peonies. You could easily find dozens of beautiful pink tree peonies and Itoh variaeties, but it would be hard to beat Paeonia Itoh Group ‘Morning Lilac’, shown here with catmint (Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’).

And ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’, below, is another beautiful pink Itoh peony.

One of the most elegant, pink-flowered spring shrubs is Calycanthus x raulstonii ‘Hartlage Wine’. This superb selection of a hybrid between Carolina allspice (Calycanthus floridus) and the Chinese species C. chinensis was developed at the North Carolina State University arboretum headed by the late J.C. Raulston. The hybrid honours Raulson, while the selection is named for Richard Hartlage, the grad student who made the cross.

I do know that weigelas (Weigela florida) are not much in fashion these days amongst the horticultural cognoscenti, given that they were much overplanted in decades past. But they are largely problem-free, gorgeous in flower, and quite attractive to pollinators, especially bumble bees. (Incidentally, my friend Rebecca Alexander, erudite librarian at the University of Washington Botanic Gardens Center for Urban Horticulture, points out that the genus should be pronounced VYE-guh-la, since it’s named after German Botanist Christian Ehrenfried von Weigel –and certainly not wuh-JEE-lia. But imagine the looks you’d get at your local nursery as you ask for Vyeguhla!) I think they are lovely shrubs with exciting variety in their flower and leaf colours and forms, especially the beautiful variegated-leaf cultivar ‘Variegata’. Skilful pruning immediately after blooms fade helps maintain a vigorous shrub, but rejuvenation pruning may be required every few years to remove the oldest wood and keep the shrub at a reasonable height.

I’ve also seen weigela grown as an unexpectedly attractive flowering hedge.

Mmm…. lilacs. Everyone loves lilac season, with those magnificent perfumed trusses of the deep-purple, reddish-mauve, white or soft lilac flowers that gave that hue its name. While true pink isn’t seen in the many named lilacs descending from the common lilac Syringa vulgaris, it is found in a class of late-bloomers generally called the Preston lilacs (Syringa x prestoniae). The name honours Isabella Preston, the Canadian plant breeder whose work in the 1920s and 30s with crosses of the late Syringa villosa (shown below) with Syringa reflexa resulted in so many excellent and hardy shrubs, mostly known as the Villosae Group. Lightly-scented (of privet, rather than the typical lilac scent), they flower 10 days to 2 weeks after common lilacs.

Other breeders worked with these lilacs too, such as Dr. Frank Skinner in Roblin, Manitoba, who developed the beautiful pink-flowered ‘Hiawatha’, on the left below, in 1932. On the right is ‘Isabella’, developed in 1928 by its namesake Miss Preston.

Syringa x prestoniae ‘Miss Canada’ was introduced, appropriately, in Canada’s Centennial year 1967, by Dr. William Cumming at Manitoba’s Morden Research Centre, a cross between Syringa josiflexa ‘Redwine’ and S. x prestoniae ‘Hiawatha’, above. What a pink beauty she is.

Syringa x prestoniae ‘Ferna Alexander’, was introduced in 1970 by Boston horticulturist John H. Alexander, who recommended appreciating these late lilacs for themselves as exceptional shrubs, rather than comparing them to the familiar common lilac and its selections. I photographed this rare beauty at the top of the Lilac Dell at the Royal Botanical Garden, Hamilton, Ontario, on June 10, 2011. It’s named for the grandmother of current Arnold Arboretum plant breeder J.H. Alexander III, so a tip of the hat to the breeding talents of the Alexander family.

Here’s another beautiful pink Preston from John H. Alexander – ‘Alexander’s Aristocrat’. It seems to me that the RBG and other lilac gardens should be propagating these unusual introductions and making them available in commerce so we don’t lose them for future generations.

Finally, while I’m immersed in pink lilacs — and I could go on and on with pink Prestons I’ve photographed: ‘Alice Rose Foster’, ‘Danusia’, Romeo’, etc. — let me finish up with a beautiful pink, Chinese species lilac from the David Lam Asian Garden at the U.B.C. Botanical Garden in Vancouver (though hardy in cold regions as well): the spectacular Syringa sweginzowii. If that doesn’t knock your socks off, I don’t know what will.

Can you imagine the joy they must have felt at the Arnold Arboretum that day in June 1915 when beautybush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) flowered for the very first time in North America? The seeds had been collected fourteen years earlier near Hubei China by Ernest Wilson, but there was no foretelling that this stunning pink apparition would be the result. Wilson himself was so fond of it, he said: “Among the deciduous-leaved shrubs that central and western China has given to American gardens Kolkwitzia stands in the front rank.” I agree – and feel so lucky that my neighbour planted two beautybush shrubs along our property line, which I get to enjoy as borrowed scenery each June.

Though the species itself tends to be a pale, almost fleshy-pink, the one below in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery has the rich colour of the selection ‘Pink Cloud’, a 1946 introduction from the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley.

My final pink-flowered favourite is Robinia x slavinii ‘Hillieri’, a pretty 1930 selection of the hybrid ‘Slavin’s locust’ developed by New York breeder Bernard Slavin, who in 1919 crossed pink-flowered Robinia kelseyi with the large, white-flowered North American native black locust, Robinia pseudocacia.

With its wisteria-like pink flower clusters much sought out by bumble bees, it’s a lovely sight in early June, though it does bear prominent thorns. I photographed it at Mount Pleasant Cemetery down the road from my home in Toronto, where choice plants have been grown by the arborists on staff for many decades. Sadly, it appears that this tree is not easily found in North America – a shame, really, because it’s a good choice for a small garden.

I could continue indefinitely with pink woody plants for spring, including crab apples, hawthorns, deutzias and, especially, roses (tune in next time for pink clematis & roses). But it’s May, and there’s gardening to be done.

Fall Foliage: Yellows & Golds

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Janet

This is a fact: red & orange fall colours would not be nearly so thrilling without the beautiful contrast of neighbouring yellows and golds.

If you’ve followed along as I offered up some lovely trees, shrubs and perennials whose leaves turn red in autumn, and a second group whose foliage turns glorious shades of orange, apricot and bronze, I’m sure you’re waiting with bated breath for the final installment. No? Well, anyway, those would be the many species that turn yellow and gold. As we know, autumn colours result from the breakdown of chlorophyll (the ‘green’ pigment) as temperatures cool and days shorten in late summer and early fall. Yellow leaves owe their brilliance to the presence of a group of orange-yellow pigments called the carotenoids, and within that group, the yellow xanthophylls (the other group being the orange carotenes on display in my last post). Not only are xanthophylls found underlying the chlorophyll in leaves, where they absorb sunlight in a specific spectral range, they are also responsible for the petal colour of yellow flowers – all those “damned yellow composites” (DYCs), i.e. daisies like coreopis, heliopsis and silphium, among hundreds of others. Even the yellow in egg yolks comes from a xanthophyll called lutein in the hen’s diet. And, of course, xanthophylls give us the brilliant autumn yellow of trees like our beloved North American paper birch (Betula papyrifera), its pure-white bark and golden leaves resplendent against a bright-blue October sky.

Other birches turn yellow in autumn, too. Here’s the delightful cherry or birch (Betula lenta) in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto. One of its alternative names, spice birch, recalls its historic use in the extraction of wintergreen oil from the roots. It is a native tree that should be grown much more.

Hornbeams are also members of the birch or Betulaceae family, so it’s not surprising that European hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) should turn a lovely yellow-gold in fall in the right conditions. This is ‘Fastigiata’, the pyramidal form.

What about maples? Well, perhaps the most ubiquitous yellow in our urban woodlands in eastern North America is the very one we wish had never been introduced, so invasive is it and so successful at elbowing out native trees. But there is no question that the Norway maple (Acer platanoides) does have beautiful yellow fall colour.

Sugar maples (Acer saccharum), of course, can be a mix of yellow and orange and even pure yellow like the one below, given the right chemistry.

The same can be said for many red maples (Acer rubrum), like the one below growing in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. (On a personal note, I was very disappointed to find a red maple I’d ordered as a city boulevard tree in front of my house – having been led to understand that it would be a blazing-scarlet fall companion to a ginkgo further down the boulevard – has fall leaves that turn dishwater yellow.)

Silver maple (Acer saccharinum) has fall foliage of a lovely soft-yellow in most autumns, occasionally becoming a richer gold.

So it’s no surprise that the pigments it adds to Acer x freemanii, the hybrid Freeman maple (Acer saccharinum x Acer rubrum), can often result in a tree with red-splotched yellow leaves, as below, rather than the rich-red Freeman maple I included in my blog on red fall colour.

The sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus), below, often turns yellow in autumn, but cannot be depended upon to do so consistently.

In Toronto, where I live, the small Tatarian maple (Acer tataricum) turns a light yellow in fall. (Note that this is not the related Amur maple, Acer ginnala, which generally turns reddish tones.)

The majestic native hickories turn yellow in fall. The golden canopy of the shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) is a stunning crown to its handsome, peeling bark.

And the bitternut hickory (Carya cordiformis), below, another underused native tree, also turns brilliant yellow in autumn.

I live under a 70-foot black walnut tree (Juglans nigra) whose large green fruit rain down on my roof and skylight like billiard balls in autumn, so I may not be fully appreciative of its generally good yellow fall colour, seen here at Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

The pinnate leaves of thornless honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos var. inermis) take on yellow autumn color. Doesn’t this one (likely the cultivar ‘Shademaster’) look gorgeous against the blue brick wall?

Speaking of pinnate leaves, is there any foliage more beautiful than that of the Kentucky coffee tree (Gymnocladus dioicus)? And it does this in fall!

The native pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba) bears interesting maroon flowers in spring, edible fruit in late summer (provided a male tree is planted near female trees in order to fertilize the flowers), and has beautiful yellow fall foliage.

Though under a half-century of siege from Dutch elm disease, our surviving American elms (Ulmus americana) put on a gorgeous autumn show, the leaves turning bright yellow to gold.

Sadly, the specimen in these two photos, photographed at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, had to be removed.

With its heart-shaped yellow fall leaves, the eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) is almost as lovely in autumn as it is in May, when its leafless branches are lined with magenta-pink pea flowers. This one is at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Have you ever seen a yellowwood (Cladrastis kentukea) in flower in spring? It is a thing of transcendent beauty. This is my favourite specimen, at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. (Alas, this kind of show is not usually an annual thing, but happens every three years or so.)

But every autumn, the yellowwood’s leaves can be counted on for a good yellow show.

Similarly, our North American fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus) dangles its lovely white ribbons in spring, then turns yellow in October.
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In late October in Toronto, our eastern witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) conjures up the year’s latest flowers, little yellow ribbons that often emerge as a double-bill with the shrub’s beautiful yellow fall leaves.

There are several witch hazels in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and I love standing under them and looking through the rich golden canopy.

Speaking of golden canopies, you would be hard-pressed to find a more shimmering one than a forest of trembling aspens (Populus tremuloides) in autumn, something that tree-lovers in many parts of North America see as a spectacular geometry of white bark and yellow crowns. But I love the way their slim trunks create those graceful vertical lines in a forest of maples, and I especially love the fluttering sound of the leaves as they “tremble” in the wind.

There’s also a native conifer that turns yellow in autumn before losing its yellow needles. That would be our lovely, moisture-loving Eastern larch or tamarack (Larix laricina), shown here in the bog at Ontario’s Torrance Barrens, a 4700-acre dark sky preserve near my cottage on Lake Muskoka.

The lindens (Tilia sp.) turn yellow in autumn. This is littleleaf linden (Tilia cordata) just beginning its colour change.

Most tree-lovers would likely agree that the most spectacular yellow fall colour in a large tree comes from the ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba). Given that the tree is dioecious and the female produces smelly fruit, most nurseries sell only male forms. To see a tall, old ginkgo in full autumn regalia is simply breathtaking….

….and the contrast of those fan-shaped, yellow leaves with the dark spurs from which next year’s growth will emerge is quite transfixing.

Another Asian beauty for autumn brilliance is the Japanese katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum). A fine tree for a garden where it has room to reach its ultimate height of 60 feet (20 m), like this one at the Lake Joseph Golf Club near Port Carling, Ontario….

its heart-shaped leaves first turn yellow…..

….then darken to gold…..

…before falling to the ground in a brown carpet. During that period of senescence (the dying of the leaves), those who walk nearby or under its boughs will often (but not always*) notice a unique and quite strong fragrance that reminds them of burnt sugar or candy floss or caramel. This isn’t surprising, since the leaves contain the carbohydrate maltose – or malt sugar – and its concentration increases as the leaves turn color, when the scent is often released as an aromatic. The fragrance is ephemeral and transient, and *many people have never had the experience of inhaling it, but those who do don’t easily forget it.

Less well-known than the katsura is the Amur cork tree (Phellodendron amurense), a good, hardy tree for a small garden and lovely in autumn, when the yellow leaves frame the lustrous blue fruit.

As mentioned in my blog on orange fall colour, some of the Japanese cherries turn beautiful colours in autumn. The weeping Higan cherry (Prunus x subhirtella ‘Pendula’) is one that takes on a delicious yellow gold.

How about a few vines that turn yellow in autumn? One that many gardeners love for its lacy, white flower clusters in summer is climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala ssp. petiolaris). This specimen is at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Bittersweet (Celastrus sp.) turns a luminous gold in fall as the fruit capsules are opening to reveal the orange berries. I wish I could say this is the native North American vine (C. scandens), but sadly I learned many years after buying and planting it that I (like a lot of fleeced customers) had bought the invasive Asian lookalike (C. orbiculatus). Fortunately, it does not seem to have spread in my garden or in the neighbourhood, even though the cardinals adore the fruit.

There are a few good perennials that take on yellow hues in fall. The most spectacular belong to the genus Amsonia, whose icy-blue late spring flowers are indeed lovely, but its renown has come from the spectacular colour change in fall (when grown in full sunshine and moist soil). This is Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii).

And this is eastern bluestar (Amsonia tabernaemontana), in the company of a fall-blooming New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae cv) in the Piet Oudolf-designed entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum) is a favourite native perennial of mine, and very happy in my partly-shaded border. From late October into November, its gracefully arching leaves turn a beautiful, pale yellow.

For all their ubiquity as foliage accents in our gardens, hostas aren’t always appreciated for their lush, gold decaying leaves in autumn. This magical transformation tends to happen more with the thick leaves of the blue hostas, or those that have similar substance. Below is ‘Frances Williams’ in late October, jauntily sporting a Washington thorn (Crataegus phaenopyrum) leaf as a hat.

Some ornamental grasses will turn yellow in fall, and none is better than our native switch grass (Panicum virgatum). What a lovely addition this grass is to a naturalistic garden.

Finally, from my own front meadow, come the succulent leaves of sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ (Hylotelephium telephium ‘Herbstfreude’). Long after the bees have disappeared and the spent flowerheads have turned a rich burgundy, there is this brief yellow farewell to summer.

Like all the trees and shrubs above whose green leaves have worked hard for months to manufacture the sugars that feed the plants, it is now time for that mellow yellow goodbye. Let the snows come.

Fall Foliage: Orange, Apricot & Bronze

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Janet

What would autumn be in the northeast, without the blaze of sugar maples in our forests and gardens?

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In Ontario such a thought is inconceivable, but they’re just one species of many whose foliage turns salmon, orange, apricot, peach or bronze, once chlorophyll disappears in autumn and exposes the secondary pigments, whose role it is to harvest sunlight to feed the plant. Now that I’ve escorted you through the red part of the hardy autumn trees & shrubs in my last blog, let’s have a look at some species that turn those spectacular orange shades. Sugar maples (Acer saccharum), of course, are so predominant in northeast North America, they seem like the iconic poster child for colour change. Rarely, however, do they turn a solid orange like the tree below…..

Instead, their leaves transform to yellow, orange and scarlet according to conditions of sun and shade, and also according to how much sugar has been metabolized to bring on the synthesis of anthocyanins seen in the colour change of many red maples (Acer rubrum).

A few of the Asian maples take on orange hues as well. Just outside my own Toronto living room window is my nearest and dearest connection with orange autumn foliage – a common Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) that has now been with me long enough for its branches to caress the 2^nd floor guest room windows (much to my window-washer’s dismay), and to offer, absolutely free, the most beautiful fall colour show each October or early November. This lovely tree has been growing against my old house’s front wall for more than 25 years, and is protected from fierce north winds while enjoying the warmth of the sun from the south. That’s not to say it’s entirely happy; it always loses a few young boughs in an unusually cold winter, and freezing rain after a heavy snow has sheared off a big limb. But it’s this autumn transformation that makes it such a treat, with colours ranging from deep scarlet to the softest apricot.

From inside the living room, it’s like looking through a tracery of amber lace, which is why I’ve never wanted drapery or blinds on my windows and instead decided on a fringe of blown-glass witches’ balls to catch and refract the sunlight.

There is nothing more beautiful than those delicate leaves – the subject of so many fine Japanese woodblock prints over the centuries.

Another beauty from Asia – this time from central China – is the elegant paperbark maple (Acer griseum) with its glossy, peeling, copper-toned bark, and its wonderful deep orange-scarlet autumn colour. I grow this species in my own garden, but this beautiful specimen is in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery. It is simply one of the best trees for a small garden and, if possible, should be placed where its lovely bark can be seen in winter.

There’s another little Asian maple that is rather rare in gardens in North America, but seems perfectly hardy and should be used more: ivy-leaved maple or vine-leafed maple (Acer cissifolium). Multi-stemmed and used as a small tree or large shrub, it’s especially beautiful in October when its foliage turns a gold-suffused-apricot.

Then there is three-flower maple (Acer triflorum), yet another small, fine Asian maple that takes on soft orange-yellow tones in fall. I am so fortunate to have these rarer maples in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

From Korea comes a lovely shrub with waxy, fragrant, white spring flowers called Korean abelia (Abelia mosanensis). In autumn, the foliage turns a rich salmon-orange.

Many Japanese cherries turn colour in autumn. Sargent’s cherry (Prunus sargentii) often turns a spectacular mix of deep salmon and dusky rose-pink….

…while the hardy Japanese cherry hybrid ‘Accolade’, below (one of whose parents is Prunus sargentii), usually develops a good peachy-orange colour.

Even the hardiest and most common of the Japanese cherries, Prunus serrulata ‘Kanzan’ – shown here in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery – puts on a pretty, soft-apricot show each autumn.

Prunus serrulata 'Kanzan'-Japanese cherry

What else comes from Asia and turns orange in fall? Korean mountain ash (Sorbus alnifolia), also called the alder-leafed whitebeam, is a small, hardy, underused tree with small red fruit and apricot-orange leaves.

European mountain ash (Sorbus aucuparia) also puts on a good orange show in fall, both the leaves and the fruit clusters (until the birds finish with them).

What about oaks? Though there is great variability in the colour of senescing fall leaves, a number of hardy oaks pass through spectacular shades of orange and copper. Perhaps the most dependable is pin oak (Quercus palustris), with its finely-cut, narrow leaves. To see this tree on a sunny October day is to celebrate the joys of autumn. Coupled with that, pin oak is fast-growing, easy to cultivate and pollution-tolerant.

Red oak (Quercus rubra) is a majestic tree that will infuse the forest canopy with honey-gold and russet-orange, sometimes with wine-red highlights. Indeed, all these colours can sometimes be found on a single red oak bough in autumn.

We scarcely need to look outside our native flora for oaks to use in our gardens, but there’s one half-native-half-exotic hybrid pyramidal oak that’s perfectly suited for very small gardens, given its narrow, columnar bearing. It’s the Crimson Spire™ oak, (Quercus x bimundorum), a hybrid of English oak and white oak, which gives beautiful russet-orange autumn colour.

Quercus robu -'Fastigiata'-columnar English oak

Besides oaks, beeches are the quintessential stately autumn tree for bronze-gold-orange fall colour. That holds true for our native American beech (Fagus grandifolia), below, alas currently experiencing the deadly ravages of beech bark disease in my area…

…. or the European beech (Fagus sylvatica) and its various cultivars and forms, including copper beech. I particularly love the fernleaf beech (F. sylvatica ‘Asplenifolia’), below, one of the most graceful of trees, with soft apricot fall color;

Fagus sylvatica 'Asplenifolia'-Fernleaf beech

And there are a few rare Asian beeches, like Fagus orientalis,below, with its rich fall colour.

Another beautiful, large tree is the Japanese zelkova (Zelkova serrata), which always turns colour in autumn, though it can be red, soft orange, as below, or yellow, depending on the tree and the exposure.

Not all ash trees exhibit colour change in fall, but white ash (Fraxinus americana), below, can often be counted on to make a beautiful show. (Sadly, the emerald ash borer is wreaking devastation on this genus in my part of North America and no one will be planting ashes for a long time.)

What about a conifer that turns orange in autumn before shedding its needles? There are two, actually, but since bald cypress isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, let’s give a cheer for the lovely dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides).

Metasequoia glyptostroboides-Dawn redwood

A small and rather rare tree that often inspires a curious double-take in autumn is the pillar crabapple or Chonosuki crabapple (Malus tschonoskii). Its fall hues are much more vibrant than most crabapples, a gorgeous mix of gold, apricot and salmon, on a tidy tree that should be grown much more often.

From the forests of eastern North America come two smallish trees that turn apricot-gold in October. Both are members of the large birch (Betulaceae) family and much-loved for their hard wood – a trait commemorated in their respective, and confusingly similar, common names. Let’s start with American hophornbeam or ironwood (Ostrya virginiana). an understory component of forests from Nova Scotia to Texas. That genus name comes from the Greek word ostrua for “bone-like”, which gives a clue as to its hardness; traditional uses have included tool handles and fence posts.

The second small North American native is Carpinus caroliniana, also known by the similar common names of American hornbeam, ironwood, musclewood and blue-beech. I really love this tree, and if I were starting my garden from scratch, I’d make sure it included one. Look at the beautiful honeyed-apricot fall colour below….

I cannot talk about orange fall colour without mentioning smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria). Some autumns, the leaves of this large, multi-stemmed shrub are almost a neon orange and are especially thrilling when backlit by the sun. This is the wine-leafed cultivar ‘Purpureus’ – note the little wisp of left-over “smoke”.

Cotinus coggygria 'Royal-Purple'-Smoke bush

I mentioned fothergillas in my blog on red fall colour, but in fact they can also be among the best orange-leafed shrubs in autumn; it just depends on the season. And often, all colors are present in the shrub. In fact, I can promise you that if you plant one, you will be delighted with its foliage change in fall. Here is Fothergilla gardenii at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Taking a page from its red-hued cousin, the burning bush, the common European spindle-tree (Euonymus europaeus) has excellent salmon-coral fall colour when grown in sufficient sun. The one below has decided to re-flower in autumn (something that happens in many plant families, given a long summer and enough time for a few of the current year’s growing buds to mature within a single season, rather than waiting for the following spring).

And though I’ve mentioned the ‘Rosy Glow’ Japanese barberry in my discussion of red fall colour, common barberry (Berberis vulgaris) – despite its bad reputation for invasiveness and alternate-hosting of disease – is no slouch in the autumn fireworks department.

When I was designing gardens in the 1990s, I would often include Peking cotoneaster (C. acutifolius), a serviceable shrub for hedging or screening that was off the radar of most gardeners, but one I appreciated for its ease of cultivation in any soil and its beautiful mottled autumn leaf colour.

Cotoneaster acutifolius-Peking cotoneaster

Many spireas take on soft peach-apricot-gold tones in fall. Given their ubiquity –especially Van Houtte spirea (Spiraea x vanhouttei) hedges, below — it’s a good thing that they have something to offer long after their spring flowers fade.

I have a soft spot for my final shrub, given that it grows in my back garden and its fall colour change is part of a dramatic duet with a stunning neighbouring perennial – a “twofer” (well threefer, if you count the white fall snakeroot, Actaea simplex) that extends the season well into November.

Rhus-typina-'Bailtiger'-Tiger Eyes sumac-my garden

Not that Tiger Eyes™ sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) doesn’t hold its own through spring and summer: no, those ferny, chartreuse leaves add a luminous pool of light to a shady corner in my garden for months on end. But in October, when the autumn monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’) finally opens those cobalt-blue flowers atop tall, thick stems just in time for the sumac to transform itself into a lacy, apricot confection, it is simply my favourite moment in the garden.

My final plant for orange fall colour is a perennial grass, little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), below. In October, this wonderful, warm-season grass takes on soft-orange hues that speak of autumn on the prairie. And like all fall colour change, it signals a stirring last hurrah in the growing season, a time for cheering before the frosts of November subdue the garden palette and the snows of December finally subsume it. Until next year.

Fall Foliage: The Reds

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Janet

I adore October. It seems that the chaos and physical demands of summer in the garden have finally subsided to a manageable few, and there’s time to enjoy what John Keats praised in his lovely ode To Autumn: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun…” Best of all, for us here in the northeast – provided there’s been ample summer sunshine coupled with sufficient rainfall and a smattering of cool fall nights – blazing colour then decorates the forests and gardens like jewel-toned filigree, a brilliant swan song to summer.

I’ve been photographing autumn-coloured trees, shrubs and perennials for a long time, both in botanical gardens and in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, a fabulous 200-acre arboretum just a 5-minute drive from my house. So I’ve amassed a large inventory of the very best plants and have filed them by their specific pigment change, whether red, orange or yellow. (More on that below). In fact, I’ve even made up some small cards that group many of these fall lovelies by very narrow gradations. Here is today’s blog colour.

Leaves, of course, are made up of tissues, tissues are made up of cells, and the cells responsible for leaf colour are those which contain the chloroplasts. These contain the chlorophyll pigment necessary to power the complicated harvesting of solar energy, groundwater and atmospheric carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, which produces the sugars necessary for the tree’s survival. Chlorophyll absorbs energy in the form of sunlight, but only in specific portions of the spectrum; the parts it doesn’t utilize contain the green light waves, and it is these that are reflected back at us, giving the apparent green colour to leaves. Once the days shorten and temperatures cool in fall, photosynthesis ceases and the chlorophyll breaks down. But leaves also contain secondary pigments which absorb some of the other spectral light waves during photosynthesis, and take longer to break down. It is these pigments, the yellow and orange carotenoids that appear in sugar maples (shown in the aerial photo below near my own cottage garden on Lake Muskoka, Ontario), silver maples, beeches,elms, birches,tamaracks, hickories and countless other fall-turning trees, shrubs, and even perennials like Solomon’s seal. (I’ll be dealing with orange and yellow fall colours in two upcoming blogs).

Notice I haven’t said anything about red colours yet. Botanists have come to a different conclusion on why leaves turn a brilliant red, since anthocynanin pigments – which are water-soluble and absorb all spectral light except red, therefore reflect that hue back at our eyes – are not present in the leaf until late in the season, when they synthesize in the tissues as photosynthesis comes to an end. It is theorized that, in certain species, anthocyanins act as a kind of sunscreen for leaves (see the explanation in the second paragraph of this report), shielding the chloroplasts from damaging UV rays as they prepare to senesce (wither and drop) during late season photosynthesis. The salient conclusion from the report: “Because anthocyanins strongly absorb blue-green, the accumulation of anthocyanins in red autumn leaves may attenuate the quality and quantity of light captured by chlorophylls and carotenoids as leaves senesce. The major activity during leaf senescence is nutrient resorption for leaf production during the next growing season. Thus, protection from excess irradiance may play a role in limiting oxidative damage that may interfere with the retrieval of inorganic nutrients from senescing autumn leaves.”

Enough of the science. Now, I’d like to have you join me as I paint the town (and garden) a rich, ruby-red with some of my favourite trees, shrubs and perennials. Let’s start with a genus that most of us enjoy, whether it’s in our own gardens or in the woods around us: tbe maple (Acer). Perhaps the most iconic – and earliest to turn colour – is the red maple (Acer rubrum), beloved by Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), who wrote in his famous journals: “How beautiful, when a whole tree is like some great scarlet fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from lowest limb to topmost spire, all aglow, especially if you look towards the sun! What more remarkable object can there be in the landscape? Visible for miles, too fair to be believed. If such a phenomenon occurred but once, it would be handed down by tradition to posterity, and get into the mythology at last.” How lucky, then, for Thoreau and for us that most red maples turn colour each fall – though not all turn red. On my lakeshore in central Ontario, neighbouring red maples turn bright red and bright yellow – reflecting the sex of the trees, since Acer rubrum employs a variety of reproductive strategies, including male, female and hermaphrodite trees. Here are three leaves I collected beneath various red maples in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

And here is my favourite red maple in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

And let me add that standing under the boughs (below) of that red maple in October inspires a flush of romance in me not dissimilar to Thoreau’s effusive praise for the tree.

When red maple is crossed with silver maple (Acer saccharinum), you get a hybrid called Freeman maple (Acer x freemanii), some of which turn a copper apricot, or lemon yellow streaked with red, or pure red, when a good selection such as ‘Autumn Blaze’ is cloned. Freeman maples are fast-growing like silver maples but do not break as easily, and have the advantage (usually) of excellent autumn foliage, like the one below in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Notice the silver maple influence on the leaf shape.

Japan has give us a number of lovely ornamental maples. The best pure-red autumn color tends to come from the wine-leaved forms of Acer palmatum such as ‘Bloodgood’, or any in the Atropurpureum group. This is what I found one November as I visited the cemetery. You can understand what it looked like the previous day before frost hit the tree and caused it to drop its leaves (abscission is the scientific term) in this perfect red carpet.

Many of the threadleaf Japanese maples (Acer palmatum Dissectum Group) will turn red, though more often a salmon-orange. This is the cultivar ‘Waterfall’ in a good autumn at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

And I love the lacy leaves of the fullmoon maple (Acer japonicum) cultivar ‘Aconitifolium’ as they turn red in fall. This one was at Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

Ultra-hardy Amur maple (Acer ginnala) will often turn bright red, especially the selected forms. Here it is at Toronto Botanical Garden, showing variation in side-by-side shrubs.

Sweet gum trees (Liquidambar styraciflua) often turned mottled shades of red, orange and yellow – and those are my favourite. But some, like the one below at the Toronto Botanical Garden, turn clear red.

Sour gum or tupelo trees (Nyssa sylvatica) are at the northern edge of their hardiness zone in my part of the world, so aren’t often seen. But there are two in Mount Pleasant that I adore in autumn.

Oak trees are variable in colour (and the leaves contain tannins, which causes them to persist as brown leaves through winter) but good red-russet fall hues are often seen in white oaks (Quercus alba), like the majestic old specimen below, at Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

And the Shumard oak (Quercus shumardii) will usual colour deep cherry-red in autumn, like this young tree at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Serviceberry trees and shrubs (Amelanchier sp.) also turned a mottled scarlet-orange in early autumn – a delightful sayonara from such useful native species, with their lovely edible fruits. These are the changing leaves of Allegheny serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis).

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Moving on to the dogwoods, here is the Kousa dogwood from Asia (Cornus kousa) with its rich red colour and next year’s buds clearly visible.

Our native alternate-leafed or pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia) takes on a wine-red color in fall. This one at the Toronto Botanical Garden gets a nice contrast boost from its background of a redbud (Cercis canadensis) turning yellow for fall.

And let’s not forget the common shrub we often love to hate for its wandering ways, staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina). Here it is during a brilliant October sunset on the granite ridge behind my Lake Muskoka cottage.

Burning bush (Euonymus alatus) with its neon pinkish-red tones is probably the most spectacular of the fall-coloured shrubs. Below are two views of the dwarf burning bush (E. alatus ‘Compactus’) hedge in my own front garden. Here it is from the east…

…and from the west, in another year with more red than pink in the mix.

Oak-leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) usually turns a lovely, deep plum-red in autumn.

Many of the Asian witch hazels take on good red-russet tones in autumn. (Eastern witch hazel, on the other hand, turns a luminous gold.) This is Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Diane’.

Barberries – love ‘em or hate ‘em – take on a variety of rich autumn tones, from scarlet to orange. This is the Berberis thunbergii ‘Rosy Glow’ in my own garden, consorting nicely with fall monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’).

Forthergilla is another native northeastern shrub that takes on amazingly beautiful, mottled fall colours. Here is dwarf fothergilla (F. gardenii) in my own garden, showing more red than the oranges and golds that often combine with it.

And what about vines? Probably the best-colouring is our native Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia). In a site with lots of sun, like the building wall below at the Toronto Botanical Garden, you can expect a stunning red show in October. Where there’s a little more shade, this vine takes on beautiful, mellow tones of burgundy and soft pink.

Let me finish with a few perennials whose leaves do their own autumn thing. Here is one of the better cranesbills, Geranium wlassovianum, with its leaves just beginning to turn red. (This is also a fabulous pollinator plant; the bees adore it.)

Some ornamental grasses undergo colour change in fall. One of the finest is ‘Shenandoah’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum), which colors a deep red-burgundy.

And my final red star is bergenia (Bergenia cordifolia), whose evergreen leaves often turn a rich red or russset in fall…..

that lasts right through the snows of winter until spring, when they can do double-duty as partners to some of the tiny spring bulbs, like the glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii) here at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Mellow Yellow Magnolias

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Janet

I had a glorious time wandering the paths of the Shrubs Section (Arbustes section en français) at Montreal Botanical Garden (Jardin Botanique de Montréal) last week (May 21-22). What became very evident was that – in the wake of the coldest winter in 10 years – the yellow magnolias in MBG’s outstanding collection were competing with each other to be the most beautiful and floriferous they could be. Among the many was this lovely selection called ‘Sunburst’, one of three magnolias I discuss below that were hybridized by the late N. Carolina geneticist Dr. August Kehr (see below).

Though hybrid yellow magnolias often flower on bare wood before the leaves emerge, these specimens cleaved more to the innate property of one of the parents of all yellow magnolias, the native North American cucumber magnolia (Magnolia acuminata) to flower simultaneously with leaf emergence. Perhaps that is a function of climate and geography, since many of these selections seem to flower on bare branches elsewhere, according to photos on the internet. Still, the leaves were relatively small, so the flowers preened like large yellow birds – which just happens to be the name of the one of the best-known hybrids, Magnolia x brooklynensis ‘Yellow Bird’, below..

That hybrid species name honors the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG), whose magnolia breeding program was launched in 1956 and thrived under Dr. Lola Koerting at the Kitchawan Research Lab. ‘Yellow Bird’ was a second-generation cross between M. acuminata and M. x brooklynensis ‘Evamaria’, a rather muddy. yellow-flushed pink that was itself a 1968 cross between M. acuminata and the shrubby Asian M. liliiflora, below, which I photographed at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Gardens.

Perhaps it’s best to start any discussion of yellow magnolias with the breeding parent. Cucumber magnolia, named for the green cucumber-like fruit before it ripens to red, reaches its maximum size in the Appalachians, where trees can grow more than 100 feet in height and 60 feet in width. The oldest-known specimen, at 432 years (300 years older than the average) is on a condo property in Canton, Ohio, where it towers over the oaks, elms and maples at 96 feet with a 69-foot spread, but most are of a more modest height. The species ranges into the most southerly part of Ontario, on the northern shore of Lake Erie. However, it does survive, if not exactly thrive, in Toronto – USDA Zone5a. In fact, a specimen grows right in my neighbourhood, on the arboretum-like grounds of Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

You can see the problem with M. acuminata, even on the smallish one in the cemetery: underwhelming flowers, and overwhelming leaves.

Still, a yellow-flowered magnolia was desireable so the BBG breeders looked for a way to develop garden-worthy yellow magnolias at a size that would suit residential gardeners. They found that certain southern populations of cucumber magnolia (previously classed as M. acuminata var. subcordata or a subspecies, but not currently recognized as different taxa by North American taxonomists) attained a more modest height and bore flowers of a better yellow, although less hardy. That gave them the material to make their first and arguably most famous, introduction, M. x brooklynensis ‘Elizabeth’ (1977), which was a cross with the smallish Yulan magnolia from China, M. denudata.

But ‘Elizabeth’, diminutive southern/Chinese lady that she was, had the habit of turning a little pale in the heat. “Yellow-gone-to-cream” was not the color the BBG breeders had in mind, so the next generation of crosses aimed for colorfast yellows. Thus was born ‘Yellow Bird’, mentioned at the top. Under Dr. Mark Tebbitt, the BBG next introduced M. x brooklynensis ‘Lois’ in 1998, a rich-yellow named for Lois Carswell, a former Chairperson of the Board of BBG. A cross between M. acuminata and a sibling of ‘Elizabeth’ (M. acuminata x M. denudata), I remember being wowed by ‘Lois’ on BBG’s beautiful Magnolia Plaza just 5 years after her 1998 registration. Not only does ‘Lois’ emerge later than ‘Elizabeth’, saving it from the frost devastation that can kill early flowers, it remains bright-yellow and flowers for several weeks.

Three of the gorgeous yellows at Montreal Botanical Garden represent the breeding work of the renowned Dr. August Kehr (1914-2001) of Hendersonville, North Carolina. A retired USDA geneticist, his property was on Tranquility Place, so it was appropriate that his first introduction was named ‘Tranquility’.

Dr. Kehr hybridized M. ‘Golden Endeavor’ in 1988 and registered it in 1999. Its parentage is M. acuminata var. subcordata ‘Miss Honeybee’ x M. ‘Sundance’ (M. acuminata x M. denudata).
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And then there was ‘Sunburst’, its narrow tepals reminiscent of the star magnolia (M. stellata) in one its parents ‘Gold Star’, which was crossed with M. x brooklynensis ‘Woodsman’ by Dr. Kehr. He selected ‘Sunburst’ in 1997 and registered it in 1999.

Two of the most beautiful magnolias at Montreal are the work of Dr. David G. Leach of the David G. Leach Research Station at the Holden Arboretum in Madison, Ohio, near Cleveland. ‘Golden Sun’ was registered in 1996, a product of “superior forms of both parents” M. acuminata x M. denudata. With its lovely bearing, waxy petals, and good colour, it was my favourite of all the yellow magnolias at MBG.

‘Golden Goblet’ as the name suggests, has a tulip form that does not fully open. Bred by Dr. Leach from M. acuminata var. subcordata ‘Miss Honeybee x (M. acuminata x M. denudata), it is an early bloomer (though the flowers still held their yellow colour when I saw them) and very hardy.

Another famous magnolia breeder has his work on display at Montreal Botanical Garden. The late Phil Savage (hybridizer of the popular ‘Butterflies’) of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, crossed M. acuminata ssp. subcordata x M. ‘Big Pink’ (Japanese Form) to produce ‘Limelight’. I liked this one too. In fact, I’d have a hard time choosing just one of these yellow beauties.

As its name suggests, another Phil Savage hybrid, ‘Maxine Merrill’, is a child of the ubiquitous and hardy, white-flowered Loebner magnolia M. x loebneri ‘Merrill’ crossed with M. acuminata ssp. subcordata ‘Miss Honeybee’.

For sheer novelty, I loved the interesting, pale flowers of ‘Banana Split’. Imagine, if you will, a big, pink-striped, creamy-yellow banana peel, flopped open to the sun. Now imagine hundreds of them open at the same time. The shrub did have an ice cream sundae feel to it and is the progeny of a cross made in 1992 by the late Dr. August Kehr using ‘Elizabeth’ as the pollen parent with the saucer magnolia – M. x brooklynensis ‘Elizabeth’ x (M. x brooklynensis ‘Woodsman’ x M. x soulangeana ‘Lennei’). It was registered in 1999 by Philippe de Spoelberch, the Belgian owner of the Wespeleer Arboretum.

I felt fortunate to have visited Montreal Botanical Garden when these sunny beauties were in bloom, all reflecting the vigor of a most remarkable North American native tree. And I enjoyed digging a little into the history of those who worked to bring them to gardens around the world.

To recap, here are nine of the most spectacular yellow magnolias:

1- M. ‘Golden Sun’; 2- M. ‘Maxine Merrill’; 3- M. ‘Banana Split’; 4- M. ‘Yellow Bird’; 5- M. ‘Golden Goblet’; 6- M. ‘Sunburst’; 7- M. ‘Limelight’; 8- M. ‘Golden Endeavour’;9 M. ‘Tranquility’

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Category Archives: Trees

The Rosy Buds of May and Beyond

Fall Foliage: Yellows & Golds

Fall Foliage: Orange, Apricot & Bronze

Fall Foliage: The Reds

Mellow Yellow Magnolias

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