More Fall Foliage

Though we do have some bare trees now all the warm weather we’ve had lately seems to be keeping a lot of the leaves on the trees. I thought I’d take a drive down one of our many country roads recently to see one of my favorite views of Mount Monadnock, and to see what the foliage was like there. The above photo shows what the road looked like and also shows that yes, I stopped to take photos. Luckily there isn’t much traffic on most of these back roads but even if there was we’re used to seeing people stopped on the side of the road with cameras at this time of year.

And oh, the things you see along these back roads. You really just have to stop sometimes and let yourself absorb the beauty of it all. This kind of magic isn’t something that we who live here take for granted; if you came here to see the foliage you would find that many of us locals would be standing right there beside you, and like you we’d be knocked speechless by the beauty of it all.

This view shows you what we were just driving through, with Mount Monadnock in the background. This is one of my favorite views of the mountain, but the bright sunshine made the foliage colors all look orange to me again.

I thought this red maple tree (Acer rubrum) was beautiful enough to have its own photo.

Maple trees can be any one of several colors including yellow, orange and red, and often once they have fallen they turn a beautiful deep purple. The leaves in this photo seemed to be heading towards yellow.

This is a view of the red maple trees along Route 101, which is a busy highway. Highway or back road it doesn’t matter, because you find this everywhere you go.

The sun chose a yellow leaved maple tree to spotlight and it looked like someone had thrown a great handful of yellow confetti out over the Ashuelot River. Sometimes you just have to say gosh, will you look at that. Hopefully you will have a camera in your hands when you do.

But isn’t it funny how the direction and intensity of the light can make a scene look so different? Like the previous photo this is a shot of the Ashuelot River in bright sunlight, but how very different the two scenes look. Photographers want to know these things so they can take them into account when taking a photo, but the path to that knowledge is usually strewn with many thousands of rejected photos. Of course it could be worse; that path could be strewn with rejected paintings.

This view from along the Ashuelot River shows how some maples have lost their leaves. Usually though, oak and beech trees start to turn and are at their peak just after the maples lose their leaves, so there is an unbroken line of color that can sometimes last a month. I think this year it will last more than a month.

Many of the leaves fall into the water and end up at the bottom of the river.

But while they float they’re still pretty.

On shore you might see the red / orange foliage of marsh St. Johnswort (Hypericum virginicum.) Many St. Johnsworts have a lot of red in them in their buds and seed pods, but I can’t think of another that I’ve seen with red leaves. Marsh St. Johnswort is also unusual because of its pink rather than yellow flowers.

Our hillsides still have good color but I’m seeing more bare trees on them too. When all the color on this hillside is gone it’s going to seem a very dramatic change.

Many of our bracken ferns (Pteridium) have turned to their flat, pinkish brown color but this one still glowed. I love to look at the many different patterns on ferns.

Oriental bittersweet berries (Celastrus orbiculatus) have a three part yellow outer shell that encloses the tomato red berry.  Once the berries, each containing 3 to 6 seeds, are showing birds and small animals come along and snap them up, and that’s why this vining plant from China and Japan is so invasive. Its sale and planting are prohibited in New Hampshire but the berries make pretty Thanksgiving centerpieces, so many people go out and cut what they find in the wild before the holidays. This also helps the plant spread.

This year the record warmth is making the process go very slowly, but the burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) along the Ashuelot River in Swanzey are still changing to their pink / magenta color. Just before the leaves fall they’ll turn a soft, very pale pastel pink. The leaves on the trees above them seem to help regulate how quickly the burning bush leaves change color by keeping frost from touching them. In years when the overhanging branches lose their leaves early there is a good chance that the burning bushes will also lose theirs quickly. There have been years when I’ve seen hundreds of bushes all lose their leaves overnight.

The burning bushes might lose their leaves quickly some years but the berries will persist until birds have eaten every one of them. That’s what makes them one of the most invasive plants in the area and that is why, like Oriental bittersweet, their sale and cultivation have been banned in New Hampshire.

Just as beautiful but nowhere near as invasive are our native maple leaf viburnums (Viburnum acerifolium.) This one had the same pink as the burning bushes, but this small shrub can wear many colors, from orange to deep purple, and yellow to pale pink. I’m not sure if each one has the same colors year to year or if weather affects and changes their color each year.

You often get lucky and see two colors on maple viburnum leaves. I thought these purple and orange ones were absolutely beautiful with the beech leaves as a backdrop.

Few plants can outshine the beautiful deep purple of bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamara.) This native of Europe and Asia is in the same family as potatoes and tomatoes and produces solanine, which is a narcotic, and the plant is considered toxic. It was used medicinally in medieval times, possibly as a dangerous sedative. In large enough doses solanine can paralyze the central nervous system.

The water was warm and the air cool one morning, and a gray mist rose from Half Moon Pond in Hancock. The light was also quite dim with the sun still behind the hills, so I was surprised that this photo came out at all. The time falls back an hour next weekend as daylight saving time ends. I’m not looking forward to it being dark at 5:00 pm, but I will be happy to see sunny mornings again.

Oak and beech trees are usually the last to change in this part of New Hampshire and they have just started changing. That means that the astounding colors found in the oak and beech forest that surrounds Willard Pond in Antrim should be just about at their peak and perfect now, so that’s where I’m headed today. Hopefully the next fall foliage post that you see on this blog will be from there, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in the fall.

Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love. ~Anonymous

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