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.

Spring 3d: Basswood and the Birches

Basswood (Tilia americana) is also known as linden.  Although several I know of grow in the neighborhood, all the photos are of one tree.  A branch growing adventitiously from the trunk is low enough for close-ups, but this leafed out days ahead of the crown, so I also took photos of a higher branch.   As of today, 5/27, the flowers have yet to bloom.  Each little cluster of flowers hangs beneath a long, pale bract; in the fall each cluster of fruit will be launched beneath its own little hang glider.

May 1st 

May 4th

May 5th

May 7th

May 11th

May 13th

May 16th

 

May 19th



May 21st

May 23rd

 May 26th

Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera) is really a more northern tree, but it's planted in yards, like the two trees here.  It lowered from about May 6th (earlier?) to the 12th when the male catkins fell.

May 1st, 4th, 7th (2),

 11th, 13th, 16th and 21st.

Gray Birch (Betula populifolia) is a fast-growing and short-lived tree common in oldfields.  The tree here is in a yard.  It flowered from about May 7th to the 22nd when the male catkins fell.

Photos May 1st, 5th, 7th, 11th,
13th, 16th, 21st, 23rd and 26th.

I first met river birch (Betula nigra) in Georgia, where a specimen with the distinctive peeling pink bark grew outside UGa's Plant Science Building.  I was startled to meet with it again so far north.  Although largely a southern tree, its range reaches s e NY, and even the s e corner of New Hampshire.  [5/29: This tree pulled a fast one on me: after weeks of waiting for it to flower, I plucked what I though was an immature flower cluster only to discover it had maturing seeds inside!  It seems to have flowered weeks ago, but I never saw flowering catkins until I went back and studied the earliest photos--you can see them in the background lower right quadrant of the second photo.]

Photos May 5th (2), 11th (2), 16th,
19th, 21st (2), 23rd (2) and 26th.

Hard to believe this still isn't the end of Spring 3!  Next up: ash and hickories!