Friday, December 17, 2010

Fall Foliage - Things on the Yellow Side

I've spent the last few evenings finishing up some knitted things for Christmas gifts and going through all of the pictures I took this fall to share with you all. Lots of pretty things and I've sorted them by color. Tonight I'll post the ones that are more on the yellow or gold side. The one above is a Cranberry Viburnum. The leaves can vary between yellow and this reddish color.
This one is Cercidiphylum japonicum. Not only does it have parchment yellow leaves in the fall, on warm sunny days you often get the smell of brown sugar from the leaves.

This is a little known (at least I'd never heard of it when I got the plant) called Grewia biloba. It is a small shrub, at least so far, with nice fall color after green/chartreuse leaves all summer.


The Clethras don't always have nice color in the fall, but this year all of them seem to have decided to put on a nice show. We found it rather odd around here that we had such poor fall color, at least as far as trees go; only a few maples had much color at all, but things that rarely color up just had gorgeous colors



Here is a maple, Acer vitifolium - grape leafed maple that was yellowish on it's way to being quite a bit more red. Not red in the way of most of the Japanese Maples, but definitely more red that it is in the picture above.



This is one of my favorite maples, Acer tegmentosum. It needs almost full shade and a sheltered location to thrive. Ours took quite awhile to settle in, but it is now manytimes taller than I am and has wonderfully striped, almost shiny, green, grey and white bark. Once settle in, it seems to be pretty carefree. Deep rooted so I never have to give it any water, it has green leaves and then this bright yellow in the fall.

If you want unusual fall color, this Orixa japonica is about the best you can get. The leaves turn a papery white and hold that way until a heavy frost, when they drop, every last leaf, overnight. You can see the last little bit of green showing on these, but it was getting cold and I didn't want to take a chance on missing the picture. I had walked to the back of the garden every day for at least 2 weeks waiting for the perfect picture when I took this. Sometimes you just have to settle for what you can get instead of taking a chance on getting no picture at all.

Ginkgo biloba can turn this very light yellow or a deep, lemony color. If there's an early frost, like the Orixa above, every leaf will drop overnight whether they have turned yet or not. We get good fall color on them about one in four years. Gorgeous when it happens.
Tomorrow I'll post the fall colors of those trees and shrubs that are red and orange. Way too many to post them all, but I've chosen some of the nicer ones this fall. See you tomorrow.
Jane








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