At long last, some excellent fall colors come to the area

This past week finally provided some excellent fall colors to delight our senses. In general, it was not been a great season for fall color in our forests. The last leaves to change color and be shed are generally the oaks and beech trees, but most of the golden, sugar maple leaves, the yellow aspens, birches and the purple colored ash are long gone.

Sadly, many of the bare ash trees we are seeing now, will not leaf out next spring, having succumbed to the Emerald Ash Borer this past summer. Immature oak and beech trees may even retain their brown leaves for much of the winter because they do not produce enough abscisic acid to allow timely leaf drop as older specimens do.

Evergreen trees such as pines, spruce and fir also shed their oldest needles at this time. Sometimes this causes concern among homeowners who wonder if the yellow needles they are seeing now are signs of disease. In general, if it is the inner needles on any branch that are turning yellow, there is no problem. If the current season’s needles are turning yellow and dropping right now, leaving bare branches, that is a serious issue.

Unless, of course, you are observing a larch tree. Larch trees are the only cone-bearing trees with needles that are shed each fall, I have several acres of 30- to 40-foot tall larch on my property that are a beautiful yellow color right now. They also look very pretty each spring as they re-foliate with soft, emerald green needles.

My friend Lester has correlated the larch tree needle drop with the peak migration of a game bird called woodcock that we used to hunt quite often, in years gone by. There seem to be far fewer woodcock then there were 20 or 30 years ago in the places we hunted. Some people would just assume that this indicates fewer woodcock remain to be hunted, but landscapes change. The open meadows and wet areas we hunted then are now turning into mature forests.

This slow, but steadily, ever-changing landscape becomes much more noticeable as seasons turn into decades. Sometimes it is hard to see the forest as an evolving entity, but cities are evolving entities too. Manhattan has its long-standing landmarks, but if you look at pictures from 30 or 40 years ago, you will notice a very different looking city than it is today.

I am always impressed by the beautiful red, maroon or purple color of Virginia Creeper each fall. It makes this rather aggressive, native, vine much more tolerable in my home landscape. Virginia creeper is one of the most widespread vines (along with poison ivy) that I know of. Like poison ivy, it seems to grow happily from south Florida to Northern Canada. I am also now seeing the beautiful orange and red, two parted fruit of the very invasive, Asiatic bittersweet vine in my woods. It is a very distinctive berry that you all should be able to recognize. If it ever stops raining I will prune back these vines and destroy the fruit to try to prevent it from spreading. This is one of the few “invasive” plants that I bother with on my property. For some reason, almost every place where I see it growing, it is accompanied by poison ivy. I have used herbicides on both of these weeds in the past, but now I wonder if my spraying has done more harm than good?

In a week or so, I will be back in Florida where much of the plant material is foreign to me. Live oaks, often with dangling Spanish moss and palm trees of many species will replace the sugar maples and northern oaks that I am so accustomed to seeing. Little by little I am learning some of these plants but it is a slow curve.

There is still some gardening season left for those of you who are willing to brave the colder

weather! Next week I will write about planting bulbs, or forcing bulbs if the ground is frozen!