Late Colours
The full arrival of autumnal coloration has seldom, in my memory, been so long postponed, and it may be that its enjoyment will be briefer than usual. A frost sharp enough to strip. the horse chestnuts and ashes of almost every leaf has often been recorded round about the middle of October, and in most years hardly a leaf is left on any deciduous tree (except, of course, brown and withered oak and beech leaves) after mid- November. Nevertheless, the wetter years as a rule lengthen and enhance the period of the autumnal leaf. Which is the most brilliantly coloured of our trees or shrubs? In regard to a single leaf, I would put the spindle first. It runs into Might streaks of utterly different colours rather like a pear leaf, and a few such leaves, up against the unfolded berries, which in Tennyson's opinion looked like flowers, are as gorgeous as any sumach or other rhus, even cotinoides. It was a blow that, after I had imported several seedlings into my garden, they grew foul and black each spring with the fly that .is the special foe of the broad bean. Our English autumn landscape has been largely deprived of the beautiful wild barberry because the Ministry of Agriculture issued a plea for its destruction as the host of one of the fungoid enemies of wheat ; but I believe this theory is now denied. Whatever particular leaf is thought most handsome, there are only two trees in the running for their painting of the landscape scene—the beech and the cherry—and the trunks and massed foliage of the beeches puts them ahead of the more sparsely scattered cherries.
Previous page
