Fall colors are fading but some jewels remain | Plant Lovers' Almanac
Naturally fall color is fading, but a trip to the Ohio State University campus in Columbus and its Chadwick Arboretum last week provided a few more jewels: the pale pastel yellows and transparent ivories of the hybrid ‘Elizabeth’ magnolia, the pumpkin-esque hues of yellow buckeye, the burnt oranges of dawn redwood, and the highly defined characteristic veins of flowering dogwood leaves paired with the globe-like flower buds presaging next year's spring show.
Closer to home, at OSU’s Secrest Arboretum in Wooster, winterberry hollies are just starting their show as deep orange-red berries are turning to red along with yellow-orange leaves; soon the leaves will fall and the befruited “specialty cut” winterberry twigs will adorn holiday tables.
Lemony-yellow ginkgo leaves outside my Wooster office turn more golden by the week and will soon fall in a rush with falling temperatures, wind and rain.
Nearby at the Wooster Cemetery, oaks and maples viewed through sunlight lighten autumnal burdens while the “playful” deer prune the lower branches of evergreen arborvitaes and yews.
In Orrville, ‘Slender Silhouette’ sweet gums display their intensely narrow habit and orange, red, purple, yellow and green foliage.
Still closer to home, in the ChatScape (my yard), blueberry bushes display the ornamental mode of their edible landscape credentials, black walnut canopies are golden, spinning towers and a cutleaf sumac goes out with a final fall-time flame.
Ruby Falls weeping redbud
Ruby Falls, a red-leaved weeping dwarf redbud, is a cross between the first weeping redbud on the market, Lavender Twist or ‘Covey’ redbud, patented by nurseryman Tim Brotzman of Lake County, Ohio, and ‘Forest Pansy’ redbud, the first red-leaved redbud widely available.
Ruby Falls was introduced in 2001, and is a fine addition to what is now a wide and wild array of interesting redbuds in the landscape palette. What I had not realized until seeing it at OSU’s Chadwick Arboretum is the remarkable mix of fall foliage colors: green, yellow, orange, red and purple. Another redbud for the ChatScape.
Googling Ruby Falls begins a walk on the wild side and the natural side. In1928 speleologist Leo Lambert named an underground cave in Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee, after his wife, Ruby — honoring her for this geological wonder borne of the Carboniferous period 200 million years prior.
It is not to be confused with the above-ground Anna Ruby Falls State Park about 130 miles away in northern Georgia. Nor is it to be confused with the story of Ruby in “See Ruby Fall,” a song by Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison in 1969 (reaching No. 4 on the Billboard country charts). Some say the song title came from seeing barn murals heralding the Ruby Falls tourist attraction.
Book report: Fungus amongus
Halloween is past, but in its honor I recently read a most phantasmagorical fungal fable, “The Unfamiliar Garden” by Benjamin Percy, the second installment in his Comet Cycle. I had just given a talk in Canfield about the mutualistic symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae known as lichens, so I was primed for this book.
I don’t want to violate spoiler alert protocols, but suffice it to say that it is rollicking good fun as it exaggeratingly channels some of the real-life amazing nature of fungi and their propensity to developing varied symbioses (some mutualistically beneficial, some pathogenic, some neutral) with other life forms in a wild fictional tale.
The book’s cliffhanger lead-in to its sequel involves fungal-human communion, an ultimate evolutionary fable.
In a more realistic dark note, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently released a list of 19 fairly ubiquitous fungal species posing a “growing risk to human health.”
Of highest priority are Aspergillus fumigatus, Candida albicans, Candida auris and Cryptococcus neoformans. They and certain other fungi are estimated killers of over 1½ million people worldwide, albeit typically people with compromised immune systems due to other diseases and transplant/chemotherapy complications.
As usual, higher vulnerabilities threaten, including development of resistance to anti-fungal treatments and increased survival of certain fungi in our ever-warming environments.
So, enjoy somewhat fanciful cult-status films as “Fantastic Fungi,” ghoulish books such as “The Unfamiliar Garden,” but also learn from the reality-based warnings of the potential human threats of fungi: from the WHO; from the real-life threat of plant fungal diseases to crops and gardens from the American Phytopathological Society — from coffee rust to citrus canker.
On the brighter side, learn more of the beneficial symbioses of fungi, such as learning about lichens by visiting the New York Botanical Garden (my next adventure).
Relationships matter, plant-style
OSU’s Secrest Arboretum will hold its annual Plant Family School from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nov. 16 . All are students; all are teachers, but teachers include Jason Veil and Paul Snyder of Secrest Arboretum, and me, Jim Chatfield, retired from OSU Extension.
Cost is $40 and includes lunch, plant prizes, refreshments and more. Find registration details at secrest.osu.edu or contact Snyder at 330-263-3761 (snyder.1062@osu.edu).
Plant families (related genera) are a fundamental way to understand plant relationships, from what plants entomologists studied to see if they were susceptible to emerald ash borer (fellow members along with ash in the olive family), to which plants are susceptible to bacterial fireblight (members like apples and pears in the rose family); from which plants you can graft (only plants in the same family) to which plants (like blueberries) are in the rhododendron family and thus tend to thrive only in acid soils. We will learn of the nightshade and asparagus families, and how to ID members of the pine family.
Final note
Though fall foliage beauty is not quite totally past, it is approaching the time to turn toward evergreens and indoor gardening.
Before doing so, one last sentiment, from Albert Camus, moralist, philosopher, absurdist. Camus won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957 at age 44, the second youngest to do so, for works such as “The Stranger” and “The Plague” (“La Peste” in French).
Tragically he died when his car ran into a plane tree only two years later, and though not known for a particularly sunny disposition, he gives this thought to herald our passing season: “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
Jim Chatfield is a horticulture educator and professor emeritus at Ohio State University Extension. If you have questions about caring for your garden, write to chatfield.1@osu.edu or call 330-466-0270. Please include your phone number if you write.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Plant Lovers' Almanac: Fall colors fading but some jewels remain
