The beginning of the end of fall

Only a week after the black oaks in the neighborhood were at there most brilliant, they are fading to brown.  Oaks like these are "tardily deciduous," meaning the dead leaves hang--sometimes all winter--before falling as late as spring budbreak.  Red oak leaves are brown and dead, white oaks are mostly bare.  The first sugar maples helped kick off the color fest weeks ago, but they're individualists, and one or two still have a few yellow leaves.  Red maples paralleled the sugar, and are losing their last leaves.  River birches are sparse and yellow.  Among native trees, basswood is still yellowing, while green leaves still cling to some paper birches.  

Some lesser folk such as nightshade remain green to the bitter end.  Multiflora rose, too, is green as long as there is any light and warmth at all left in the year. 

Witchhazel is alone among the woody plants of my acquaintance in being in flower right now, though the flowers are looking a bit the worse for wear.  The seeds are forcefully ejected from the pods not at the end of flowering, but the following fall, just as the flower buds are about to open.  The witchhazel on the corner had a good fall last year, and sent many children of into the world in the second half of October, as this year's flower buds swelled and burst.  

Mostly oaks along my street.  11/5/16

Black oaks (Quercus velutina) on 11/11.

 

Last and brighest of the neighborhood black oaks.  11/13

November 19th: black oak scarlet fades to brown.

 Basswood, aka linden (Tilia americana), has lost few leaves, and many are still partly green. 11/19

Nightshade hangs on.  11/19

The first witchhazel (Hamamelis virginiana) fruits burst around October 14th.

By 10/29 leaves are gone, most flowers were open and most pods were empty.

November 19th flowers are fading.

On the Verge of Spring

The advance guard of spring—first the silver maples and then the red maples and quaking aspens—seem to have got out front alone.  I had thought spring was arriving a full month early, but it seems the other trees paid no attention to these three, and have been adhering to their own, more cautious, calendars.  The demonstrative Norway maples began to bloom in earnest this week, casting a green light over city and suburb, while the shy sugar maples are opening delicate green flowers here and there.  Paper birch catkins stiff and contracted all winter are stretching out and dangling as they prepare to drop loads of pollen, and some are beginning to leaf out, as well.  Ashes—the males, at least—are just beginning to bloom, and black oaks have buds poised to display their long, dangling flower clusters from every twig.  All in all, so many things are about to pop that we are on the verge of “spring”—the beginning of the growing season.  

Buds of black oak (Quercus velutina) breaking over a week or so

to unleash a fountain of flowers and leaves.

Other black oaks around the neighborhood getting ready to pop.

 White oaks (Quercus alba) won't be far behind.

With the foliage coming in, spotting the morning musical performers

like this black-capped chickadee is about to get much harder.

Thr little pussy willow at the high school is nearly finished.  Here it was a couple of weeks ago.

The green you've already seen is mostly Norway maple (Acer psuedoplatanus). 

It has at least a week's head-start over the earliest oaks.

 

Norway maple leafing-out.

White ash (Fraxinus americana) is beginning to flower, but so far only the males.

Ash-leaved maple (Acer negundo) is a rather strange tree

that flowers differently from other maples, dangling long, unruly red stamens.

These are around an abandoned parking lot by Palmer Avenue

Paper birch (like other birches) have their flowers ready to go in tough, compact catkins in fall,  

In spring, these relax, lengthen, and begin dropping pollen just before the leaves emerge.

I only discovered that we have sassafras (Sassafras albidum) at West Middle School

a few weeks ago, just before the flowers emerged.

Larch, or tamarack (Larix laricina) is gradually lengthening its tufts of soft, green needles.

The larches at the VA must be planted, they are so far from their sub-arctic home.

 Sugar maple (Acer saccharum) is not as demonstrative as its foreign cousin, Norway maple.  The flowers emerge here and their, small and demure, and are gradually hidden by expanding leaves.

Silver maple (Acer saccharinum) got the jump on everyone,

and had expanding leaves almost before any other buds were broken.

Flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) is preparing to justify its name.

Leaves of the one witchhazel bush I know in the neighborhood are beginning to unfold.

Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) has long since finished flowering,

but is only now beginning to spread its leaves.

Spring 3c: Oaks

The many species of Oaks divide naturally into two groups: the white oak group has leaves with rounded lobes and bears acorns that mature the same year, while the red oak group has bristle-tipped lobes and acorns that mature the second year.  I used to think I knew the local oaks--white, red, black, scarlet, scrub black, and so on--pretty well, except for annoyingly common hybrids.  Now, though, I'm not so sure: it turns out hybrids are much rarer than I'd believed, and I was really being fooled by diversity within species.  I've decided we probably have few or no scarlet oaks, but many black.

Red oak (Quercus rubra) May 4th (2), 5th, 7th (2), 8th (2), 11th and 16th.

Black oak (Quercus velutina) photos include several trees.  April 29th,
May 4th, 5th (2), 7th (2), 8th (2),
13th (2) and 19th (2).

White oak (Quercus alba) is last of this neighborhood trio of species to bloom.  White oak can be told at a glance from the others by its rounded leaf lobes and light-gray bark that peels like long vertical shingles.  Three of the four photos are of the same branch.  None are within reach.

White oak: May 7th,

 11th, 16th and 19th.