A Stroll Through the Maples

Posted on March 10, 2022 by Janet

In this third edition of my blog series on some of my favourite trees and shrubs, I’m taking a meander through the genus Acer, the maples, specifically those native to eastern North America. And what better way to start than with the spring flowers of the iconic red maple (Acer rubrum)? Always one of the first species to show colour, this tree in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery was sporting its fuzzy male or staminate flowers on its bare branches on March 31, 2010…

…. with a closer look here. Red maple flowers are an important early source of pollen and nectar for native bees, hoverflies (like the one below) and honey bees.

Red maple trees, sometimes called “swamp maple” for their propensity to grow in damp sites, are generally dioecious with male and female flowers on separate trees, but occasionally a tree will contain flowers of both sexes, but on separate branches. Some trees have even been seen to fluctuate yearly between male and female flowers – something botanists call gender inconstancy. This article titled ‘The Sex Life of the Red Maple’ by population biologist Richard Primack in Harvard’s Arnoldia magazine recalls that this gender variation has been called a “polygamodioecious” breeding system. Female or pistillate red maple flowers look like dangling, ruby-red earrings with their curved stigmas. I photographed these April 9, 2010.

I found our spring-flying polyester or cellophane bee (Colletes inaequalis) foraging for nectar in red maple flowers on April 22, 2016. However, the length of the stamens and stigmas has suggested to botanists that some red maples may also be wind-pollinated, i.e. not entirely dependent on insects for reproduction.

When I hike through the 4700-acre Torrance Barrens (my local ‘sacred place’ on Lake Muskoka) in early spring, it’s always a joy to see the red maples, their red flowers contrasting with the rugged, grey gneiss outcrops.

And at our own cottage property in Muskoka, I only have to look out the window to see one of our own wild red maples coming into bloom alongside its faithful companion, the white pine (Pinus strobus).

Red maple leaves are green in summer as they absorb sunlight to synthesize the sugars the trees need to survive. The species is well-known for being intolerant of alkaline soils, and leaves often appear “chlorotic” or yellowish in those conditions. The particular array of the leaves in the canopy is often reflected in its autumn colour, with more exposed parts of individual leaves turning red, while shaded portions turn yellow.

The winged fruit or seed key of all maples is called a ‘samara’.

The red maple below in Section J in Mount Pleasant Cemetery is one of my favourite trees in autumn. You can see some of that mixed fall colouration here….

…. and also below in my arrangement of leaves I picked up below another tree. Notice how different these leaves are from the green ones above and others later in this blog. Red maple is known for having a wide diversity of leaf shapes.

The tree has been a sentimental favourite of writers and naturalists. In his journal, Henry Thoreau wrote this on September 25, 1857: “The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river. I see one, by the canal behind Barrett’s mill, all aglow against the sun. These first trees that change are most interesting, since they are seen against others still freshly green — such brilliant red on green. I go half a mile out of my way to examine such a red banner.”

But some red maple cultivars have been selected specifically for their biochemistry in producing a reliable show of red fall colour, like the tree below (possibly Red Sunset) which has carpeted the ground in the cemetery after an overnight freeze.

Contrast that uniform colour with the leaves of the straight species, below.

In fact, there are so many mature red maples in the cemetery that I have photographed specimens featuring all-gold, all-yellow and all-red fall leaves, below. Note the serrated margins of the leaves – an easy way to tell red maple from sugar maple, which has smooth margins.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of two large red maples in autumn.

At our own cottage on Lake Muskoka, I photographed young red maples at the shore exhibiting this same colour difference. Things like this are interesting to me because there is a general theory that (red) anthocyanin secondary pigments act as autumn sunscreens for certain tree species, allowing them to continue to photosynthesize well into the fall after green chlorophyll breaks down. Despite my efforts, I have not been able to ascertain why there is such startlingly different pigment biochemistry in this species, particularly when grown on the same plot of land where pH is not therefore a factor. My own theory, backed up by a few speculative references, is that it has to do with sex of the tree: red leaves on males, yellow leaves on females. (Oh, by the way, voracious local beavers cut down these scrubby little red maples. Beavers don’t care about biochemistry, only housing.)

Speaking of the cottage, this is our best red maple in autumn, as seen from indoors. (And that’s my homemade botanical lampshade.)

It doesn’t surprise me that Acer rubrum is considered to be the ‘most abundant and widespread deciduous tree species’ in eastern North America. If you hike in our local Muskoka, Ontario woods in May, the little seedlings appear everywhere, including with spring ephemeral wildflowers such as trout lily or dogs-tooth violet (Erythronium americanum), below. This photo is also a good illustration of the “opposite branching” habit of all maples.

Here it is amidst wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) and other native plants.

In the same forest, on the same day, we find a sugar maple (Acer saccharum) seedling. Note the smooth margins and the opposite branching.

Sugar maple’s flowers are unlike those of red maple; they are ‘perfect’, meaning male and female flowers are on the same tree. Here you see mostly male flowers with their dangling anthers, but also a few female flowers with the curved stigmas. Sugar maple also flowers later than red maple.

In autumn, sugar maple trees colour early, often with salmon-scarlet leaves covering an entire tree but sometimes with many hues at once, as you see below in my photo from Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

Between them, red maple and sugar maple produce the most vibrant autumn colours in northeastern forests. One year, a relative with a small plane took me up above the forests of Muskoka. Looking down, this is what I saw: a spectacular combination of red maple and sugar maple, with birches and aspens offering yellow contrasts. Oaks would change colour later.

In the ravine in the park at the end of our street in Toronto, the population of native sugar maples, in fall colour below, struggles to survive against the incursion of exotic, invasive Norway maple (Acer platanoides), at right. That European maple takes on yellow fall colour later, along with its normal coal tar spot disease which is visible on some of the leaves.

On the boulevard in front of the pollinator garden at our house in Toronto, we have a columnar tree that I ordered as “red maple” with its presumably spectacular fall colour, to go along with the ginkgo at right. Imagine my disappointment when those red leaves turned out to be dishwater yellow. Across the street is a Freeman maple – more on that one below.

The ginkgo and red maple on my boulevard were replacements for the 100-year-old silver maple (Acer saccharinum) tree that had dominated our view and given us shade for all the years we’d lived in our home… until 2007. That’s when the city’s water department came through the neighbourhood upgrading the plumbing. I looked down from my 2^nd story windows at the workers having their lunch one day.

After they went home, I looked at the excavation on the boulevard. How could any tree survive the kind of root cutting that this would involve?

Sadly, it did not survive (though silver maples are considered short-lived compared to other native trees.) In 2011, it received the dreaded orange dot that designated it for removal. But note the weeping area in the bark; this is called ‘bacterial wetwood’ and is caused by bacterial infection of a wound. It happens to many trees and does not bode well for them.

Silver maple trees usually bear male and female flowers separately, but can also have ‘perfect’ flowers containing both male and female organs, like the one below where you can clearly see the male anthers and female stigmas.

Healthy silver maples (they can be notoriously weak-wooded) reach a considerable size at maturity, up to 90 feet (27 m) or more. Native to a wide swath of the Northeast and Central Plains from New Brunswick and Maine to Minnesota and eastern Oklahoma and Texas, they are generally bottomland trees, preferring moist soil. They derive their common name from the silvery underside of the leaves. In autumn, the foliage turns pale yellow.

Compared to red maple, silver maple leaves are narrow and very deeply notched.

There is an attractive, naturally-occurring hybrid of red and silver maples called Freeman maple (Acer x freemanii). Named in 1969 for Oliver Myles Freeman (1891-1979) of the U.S. National Arboretum……

…… who made the first controlled cross of the species in 1933, using red maple as the female parent, it blends the best traits of both species: the form and rich fall colour of red maple with the fast growth and cultural adaptability of silver maple.

Growing 40-60 feet (12-18 m) tall with a 20-40 feet (6-12 m) spread, it has become a popular street tree in Toronto. There are also many specimens at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, below.

When I created my “leaf dancers” blog in November 2020 (see Pigments of my Imagination), I gathered small Freeman maple leaves from the boulevard tree across the street to fashion the skirts of my Maple Maypole dancers. I like to think Oliver Freeman would be amused to see them.

Finally, a little maple that grows in the shady understory of northeastern forests, including the mixed woods near our cottage on Lake Muskoka: striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum). It’s also called “moose maple” because it is sometimes the winter food of moose and white-tailed deer; squirrels and chipmunks forage on its twigs; and many birds consume the seeds. Though occasionally seen as a small, single-trunked tree, it is usually found in nature as a multi-stemmed shrub, seldom exceeding 20 feet (6 m). Taxonomically, it is the only non-Asian species in the Acer section Macrantha, or “snakebark maples”; all the other 18-21 species, e.g. A. davidii, A. rufinerve, A. tomentosum, occur in China, eastern Russia, Korea, Japan or Myanmar. The photo below shows its dainty samaras.

Its leaves have three shallow lobes and the greenish flowers are held in arching racemes. If you look very closely, you can see an early instar of gypsy moth or LDD moth (Lymantria dispar dispar) on the lower right of the leaf. In May, I still thought we’d survive the onslaught of this destructive pest; by mid-summer, it was clear we had not, as you can read in my 2021 blog.

Though there are other maple trees in North America, including mountain maple (A. spicatum), Manitoba maple (A. negundo) and black maple (A. nigrum) in the east and central Canada and bigleaf maple (A. macrophyllum), Douglas maple (A. glabrum subsp. douglasii) and vine maple (A. circinatum) in the west, I’ve included in this stroll the beautiful trees I see each year here in Ontario. Oh, there’s one more maple we see fairly often – and it’s native right across the country. My little granddaughter once confused it with the phrase “make believe”, but it is our true (if slightly stylized) “maple leaf forever”.

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Want to read about more North American trees? See my recent blogs on tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera) and redbuds (Cercis canadensis and its cousins). And here is one on fall colour in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

The Witch Balls & The Japanese Maple

Posted on November 14, 2021 by Janet

It’s always the week that makes November worth celebrating. I’m referring to the spectacular display in my living room in the first ten days of November when my Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) transforms itself from a tracery of green to brilliant shades of apricot, coral, gold and scarlet.

I don’t have any curtains in the front room, just the maple outside, but the jewels in my window are the blown glass witch balls I hung there eight years ago. Not to ward off bad spirits or protect my house, as is the apparent historic use of witch balls – though that would certainly be a side-benefit. Rather it’s that eye-popping contrast of the fall colour pigments of the maple (anthocyanins and carotenes) with the refracting light from within the blown glass that makes the window seem more like a dynamic art installation than a potentially kitschy folkcraft display.

Kitsch. That’s what I was worried about a decade ago after impulsively purchasing a case lot of select witch balls from Iron Art in Ohio (at the time, I was allowed to place their minimum wholesale order, but they’ve since set up a retail site called Iron Elegance, and they also have a wide network of retailers). I’ve never been a fan of window coverings if there’s a view to close out – whether the lovely tree in the front garden or the panorama of the entire back garden from my kitchen window. Let the neighbours stare, I don’t care; nature is more important to me. But glass witch balls aren’t stained glass panels; as lovely as they might look, how would I hang them? I decided to go ahead and if I didn’t like the look, I could remove them. So I bought three wall-mounted metal cup racks featuring leaves and birds and a couple of small hooks for the larger middle window, then spray-painted them all dark-teal to go with the woodwork. I screwed them into my window frame, then, using fishing wire, I tied the balls at various levels in the upper part of the window. And as the sun shone through them that first November 2013, I was completely enchanted.

I have always loved the look of blown glass, but the first time I saw it used in a garden was in 2003 at my dear friend Virginia Weiler’s home in North Carolina, where the work of her friend John Nygren hung in her tree.

And during a 2008 garden writers’ tour of Portland, I was intrigued by Lucy Hardiman’s wonderful hanging glass display. I thought about how I might achieve something like this at home, but it seemed to me that the cold winters and winds in Toronto might be too severe for an outdoor display.

CORNING MUSEUM OF GLASS

In September 2008 we visited the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York and my love affair with glass continued. (You can read my blog about the museum here.)

From Dale Chihuly’s ‘Fern Tower’ in the lobby…

…. to the 1905 Louis Comfort Tiffany window of hollyhocks, clematis and the Hudson River, all that survives from the 44-room Rochroane Castle, built for Natchez oil and cotton millionaire Melchior Stewart Belthoover in Irvington, New York…

… to the exquisite forest glass or ‘waldglas’ drinking glasses made in northern Europe from the middle ages to the 18^th century using tree and fern potash whose iron content lends the green hue…

… to the sleek, modern work of Italian and Finnish glass artists….

…. to a mosaic Mediterranean glass bowl from the 1st or 2nd century BC, I loved it all.

At the conclusion, I even had the opportunity to blow my own glass ball – with a little help from an expert.

MURANO

Two years after visiting the Corning Museum of Glass, we were in Venice and decided to tour the island of Murano with its famous glass blowing factories.

The tour was set up by our hotel with the pick-up and boat ride to the island courtesy of one of the glass furnace factories, so we were obliged to begin there. After a long, interesting tour of the firing floor, we visited all the display floors beginning with the most expensive sculptures and chandeliers at the top (nope!) and descending to the affordable cufflinks! But somehow we ended up ordering six of the most beautiful, gold-rimmed glasses you’ve ever seen, which were mailed to us weeks later. I also wrote a blog about this memorable day.

After the obligatory furnace tour ended, we walked around the small island, visiting the interesting glass museum and window shopping. I found a jewelry shop owned by a young woman busy making earrings and beautiful blown-glass bead necklaces.

One of those became my Christmas gift from Santa that year.

Walking on, we came upon this spectacular sculpture by Simone Cenedese called Comet Glass Star. Then we had one of our best meals on our entire Venetian vacation, at a little workman’s osteria on Murano.

The Magic of Light in my Window

Though ever more humble, I still find myself sitting in my living room on those days when the sun shines through the fall leaves of the maple….

…. and hits the splashes of colour in the witch balls.

I even made a video a few years back to try to explain it.

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Today there’s freezing rain outside and soon snow will be in the forecast in Toronto. On the snowy November day when I photographed the window, below, the leaves hadn’t even fallen yet.

And I recall vividly the winter wonderland look of the tree after our devastating ice storm of December 21, 2013.

Sometimes, when I have holiday lights on the maple’s branches, I stand in the front room looking out in the darkness. The witch balls even look festive at Christmas!

In late winter or early spring, I can often catch the resident cardinals in the maple tree.

At that time of year, when the tree hasn’t yet leafed out, I especially appreciate the detail and colours of the blown glass, whether blue…

…. or green…

… or a glass so clear you can see the tiny grains from the glass-making process.

And then, suddenly, it’s June and my “living” living room ‘curtain’ is back in place, its leaves energized by the power of the sun and the glass balls refracting all the light that’s left over.

After I gave the witch balls their every-three-years wash last week, I watched them turning for what seemed like hours. I’m sure there’s some Galilean law of reciprocal motion about what happens when you twist a sphere suspended by a wire, but it seemed even more magical, as if they were rotating in sympathy with the fluttering leaves on the maple. So I’m ending with this magical moment, which I’ve set to music by the very generous T.R.G. Banks.

Pigments of My Imagination

Posted on November 16, 2020 by Janet

I’ve spent the past three weeks getting in touch with my inner child. Seriously… or not so seriously. Maybe it’s Covid. Maybe it’s the prospect of five months of winter with no travel and few opportunities to be with family and friends. Or maybe it’s just my enduring passion for the explosive foliage colours of fall. This autumn, I felt the need to be more playful; it’s been so grim, all the news. So I acted as impresario and asked my autumn leaves to dream up their own dance acts. They were all so creative – I was terribly proud of them (only my geisha declined to dance). Thus, on October 25^th a few brilliantly-coloured leaves from my backyard Washington thorn tree (Crateaegus phaenopyrum) suggested a line dance. Why not?

That same day, a few of the tiniest, uppermost red leaves from my neighbour’s Freeman maple (Acer x freemanii) requested my help with a maypole. “But it’s almost Halloween,” I said. It didn’t matter – they were so keen on the alliteration! So I agreed and made them a canopy from yellow ginkgo leaves. “But where’s our maypole?” they asked. “I’m sorry, I’m tired of drawing with a mouse. Make do with what you’ve got,” I replied. They were a little sad at first, but once the Morris music began they just started whirling those ribbons as if it was the first of May.

Then Señora Fothergilla got into the act. “Necesito bailar!” she cried, which I understand is Spanish for “I must dance!” So I helped her fashion a sexy flamenco gown from the multi-hued leaves of some of the fothergilla shrubs in my pollinator gardens. She was suitably impressed that there were so many colours! “Olé!” Así se baila Señora!

A few days later after a big wind, my boulevard ginkgo tree (Ginkgo biloba) tossed down masses of yellow fall leaves. Suddenly, nine little ballerinas were doing their pliés right in front of me. None were quite ready for principal roles, but they all agreed to be part of the Corps de Ballet.

A pair of perennial geranium leaves asked if they could be in my autumn show. They were so lovely, even with that tongue-twisting name, Geranium wlassovianum. They asked if they could do a “pas de deux”. I said it’s usually a man and woman, but…whatever. It’s a modern world.

Look who sashayed in from my front garden hedge! Yes, Miss Burning Bush Belly Dancer herself, aka Euonymus alatus, jingling and jangling her beads. I reminded her that a lot of people wanted her gone, invasive exotic that she is. “Who cares,” she said, “These people are boring. I come from the Sultan’s palace wearing autumn red! I dance!” We left it there.

Things lightened up considerably when I heard the tip-tapping feet of The Chorus Line: the pinnate dancers of the Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus). Aren’t they sweet? “One singular sensation, every little step she takes/One thrilling combination, every move that she makes…” Ah, dear Marvin Hamlisch.

Then, before I could say, un, deux, trois, out came the Katsura Can-Can Dancers (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) trailing a whiff of cheap, burnt sugar eau de cologne. In between high kicks, they complained that they’d been gold the week before, but I was late picking them up and they’d already started to age a little. I assured them they were still très jolie.

The can-can dancers had barely left the stage when I heard steel drums! Yes, it was the Liquidambar Limbo trio (Liquidambar styraciflua) chewing sweet gum, as they do, and showing how me just lowwww he can go.

I told Cherry Charleston (Prunus serrulata ‘Kanzan’) there was no smoking indoors but she said, “Stop your gaping, I’m only vaping!” What could I do? I let her off with a warning.

Oh my goodness. What a spectacle when the Ziegfeld’s Follies gal swanned out in her ridiculous costume. I mean, come on, I like Zelkova serrata too but couldn’t she have worn something a little less ostentatious?

The Busby Birchley (Betula papyrifera) girls lay down on the stage to do their routine, even though the floor was still sticky from the limbo trio. So sweet, those little paper birch leaves when they spin around like a kaleidoscope.

I was in Kyoto once, but it was springtime and the cherry blossoms were in bloom. Seeing this geisha walk under momiji, which is what the Japanese call their native maples (Acer palmatum), as it was turning colour on the first day of November kind of took my breath away. She declined to dance – “I only do that onstage in Gion with the other geishas.” Who could argue?

And then it was time for the last act: three little wild strawberry sock-hoppers (Fragaria virginiana) from my cottage on Lake Muskoka. I brought them down in the car in November and they were a little intimidated by the big city. “You’ll get used to it,” I said. “Just keep dancing.”

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My make-believe leaf dancers aside, I do love the season, almost as much as spring. I’ve given some thought to that and have come to the conclusion that when you live in a climate that gives you 5 months of winter, you learn to savour both the first stirrings of the growing season and also its last hurrah. For that reason, I’ve paid attention in my own garden not just to a two-month succession of spring-flowering bulbs, but to trees and shrubs that turn colour in fall. This is my front garden in October, with its Japanese maple and burning bush hedge.

My little pollinator garden features fothergilla, which turns every shade from pale yellow to deepest wine – as you see with Señora Fothergilla, above.

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From my living room window, I can watch the colour change on the Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), which provided the backdrop for my geisha.

When the city asked me what trees I wanted to replace an aged silver maple that had to be removed from our boulevard, I asked for a red maple and a ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), below, which turns bright yellow in autumn.

The gate leading from the driveway into my back garden has Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) climbing across it, which turns red in late October.

In my back garden, there are ornamental grasses and azure-blue autumn monkshood and spectacular apricot-orange Tiger Eyes sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) and wine alternate-leaved dogwood (Cornus alternifolia).

I love fall colour so much, I made a poster a decade ago featuring photos of the autumn leaves of 90 different trees and shrubs found in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, the 200-acre arboretum just a mile from my house. .

Speaking about the cemetery, I’ve written a blog about the spectacular display of fall colour there in October and November….

…. and more generally, I’ve done blogs on plants with red autumn leaves….

….and plants that turn orange and bronze in autumn.

I love fall colour so much I went up in a small yellow plane with an open window….

…. to photograph the red and sugar maples in the forests near our cottage on Lake Muskoka! (Thanks Doug Clark)

I love fall colour so much I had a 2018 photography show featuring my fine art photo canvases of brilliant autumn leaves….

…. that I arranged like ephemeral tapestries…

… and abstract still lifes.

I love fall colour so much I gather handfuls of leaves each autumn to paint with light…

…. and arrange in geometric designs that please my eye….

…. and simply celebrate in all their brilliant glory. For by the middle of November, the show is over, the leaves are beginning to decompose on the damp, cold ground and winter beckons with its icy breath.

But while they’re around, we can all dance.

Autumn in Mount Pleasant Cemetery

Posted on October 26, 2016 by Janet

I know I promised you the second half of my orange-for-October colour treatment, but I needed a little taste of fall today. I needed a vision of October red, orange and gold before the rain and wind sweep in tomorrow and turn the delicate, tree-borne flags of autumn into sodden layers on the ground. So I did what I’ve done for more than twenty years now: I drove to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, just ten minutes from my home, and parked my car. The cemetery’s 200 acres make it one of the biggest arboretums in Canada, and its roads criss-cross under a forest of stately trees, many with labels affixed to their trunks providing the botanical and common names. It is quiet, solemn, a place to reflect on life, death, and the seasons. I have spent hundreds of hours photographing these trees in spring, summer, autumn and winter; I know them well. Here are just a few that called out to me today.

Driving down Mount Pleasant, it was easy to pick out the neon-pink of the burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) outside the iron fence.

Just inside the gate was an Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra) turning golden-apricot.

There are massive sugar maples (Acer saccharum) near the entrance, and they’d begun their sunset colour transformation,too.

Many species of maples were turning colour. Below is red maple (Acer rubrum) – a variable autumn-colouring species, that can turn yellow, deep red, pale orange or mottled, like this tree.

Silver maple (Acer saccharinum) had become a pretty lemon-yellow.

This tall, old silver maple, below, (that is how it has been labelled) is very unusual in that its manifesting its colour change, with red and yellow pigments keeping their distance in the leaf. I think it’s highly likely there is some Acer rubrum in its DNA, making it an Acer x freemanii specimen……

The elegant fullmoon maple (Acer japonicum) always transfixes me, especially the fringed leaves of the cultivar ‘Aconitifolium’. Today, I stood underneath the tree to soak in the deep russet and scarlet tones.

There are several wonderful, big hickories at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and this bitternut hickory (Carya cordiformis) stands like a stately sentinel beside the handsome mausoleum.

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I was mildly shocked that in all the years I’ve photographed in the cemetery, I somehow missed the seven-sons tree (Heptacodium miconoides). This is its colourful second act, after the September flowers fade and the calyces turn a pretty rose-pink.

The leathery, witch-hazel-like leaves of the parrotia (P. persica) had taken on their mottled red, pink and orange colours, before falling on the small tombstones beneath it.

All the birches had exposed the underlying carotene pigments that turned their elegant leaves bright yellow. This is European silver birch (Betula pendula)….

… and this is North American paper birch (Betula papyrifera).

Serviceberry (Amelanchier sp.) leaves were glowing red and orange, the third season of beauty for this native, following their delicate white May flowers and tasty June fruit.

Tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) leaves had taken on gold and bronze tones.

The wind was picking up and the air was cold as I headed to my car. I gazed up at one of the magnificent white oaks (Quercus alba) turning crimson and bronze, its massive branches held aloft. Many of Mount Pleasant’s white oaks were already mature trees when the cemetery opened on November 4, 1876. One hundred and forty years ago this week.

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.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Tag Archives: autumn colour

A Stroll Through the Maples

The Witch Balls & The Japanese Maple

Pigments of My Imagination

Autumn in Mount Pleasant Cemetery

Fall Foliage: Yellows & Golds

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