Paint the Town Red

Autumn was a little slow in coming here, but it has (finally) officially arrived now. The signs of the season's arrival are all around. We have a jack-o-lantern on our patio. The basil plant succumbed to the cold; all the leaves are shriveled and black. Jackets and scarves (hooray!) are needed in the morning. Soup season has started. Fresh cooked pumpkin has overtaken the kitchen and is finding its way into many recipes (pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pudding, and pumpkin pie). And there are fallen leaves everywhere that MUST be walked through. (I think I might have some kind of deficiency of fall leaf crunching because I grew up with mostly pine needles). Before the trees are completely naked, the horticulturist in me begs to give voice to the colors of the season here.
Many of the trees in this area turn yellow/brown in the autumn (ie, poplar, aspen, willow, green ash, honeylocust, linden, sycamore, most of the oaks). But, there are a few trees worth mentioning individually that are real stand-outs amongst all the golden leaves. Maples are often wonderful showstoppers in the fall. Sugar maples in the northeast provide most of the stunning color. Sugar maples aren't very plentiful here, but other types of maples give quite a show. For example, both the Acer rubrum 'October Glory' (red maple) and Acer x freemanii 'Autumn Blaze' (a cross between a red maple and a sugar maple) have brilliant orange-red fall color. The 'October Glory' maple has a nice rounded form and grows to 40' or more, and its fall color can persist for three to four weeks. The 'Autumn Blaze' maple has much more deeply lobed leaves, similar to a silver maple and has extremely long-lasting color. It grows rapidly and is hardy to zone 4 (ie, Iowa wind-chill hardy), and is also quite drought tolerant. Another tree that really caught my attention was the Fraxinus americana 'Autumn Purple'. This is a cultivar of the white ash with a spectacular range of fall color from deep purple, to maroon, to red, finally to yellow-orange. I enjoyed seeing this tree slowly make its color change over an entire month. Another added perk of this tree is that is is male, so there is no messy fruit dropping everywhere (ash trees have a fruit that looks like a canoe paddle).
Finally, a note on one of the lovely native trees with great fall color. Acer grandidentatum (big tooth maple) grows as a large native shrub or small tree from Montana to northern Mexico and is found in Colorado at elevations between 7000-8000'. The leaves are 4" in diameter with blunt edges and nice red-orange fall color. It is often found growing in association with gambel oak, chokecherry, and box elder.