Here in the Northeast, autumn is a wonderful time to enjoy the changing foliage, but it's also a good opportunity to appreciate the many seeds, berries, and cones that grow on the trees and shrubs.
Many birds and small animals rely on the fall harvest of berries and seeds. They provide calories and crucial nutrients that help them thrive during the colder months when other natural food sources are nonexistent or buried in the snow. They also add beauty to the landscape when most flowers are already gone. Here is a sampling of some of the many seed pods, berries, and cones that are around my Bedford, New York farm.
Enjoy these photos, and look back at another blog I posted last month on saving flower seeds.
Have you ever heard about the beautyberry, Callicarpa? Tiny spring flowers produce clusters of these magenta colored bird berries that remain on these spreading shrubs after the leaves drop.
These shrubs are outside my guest guest house and show off beautiful color this time of year. The fruits become a good food source for many different birds, including mockingbirds, robins, and brown thrashers.
If you follow this blog regularly, you may recall learning about the bur oak, Quercus macrocarpa. We planted two rows along the outsides of the boxwood allee, one on the left and one on the right. The leaves of the bur oak are easy to identify. They are alternate, simple, six to 12 inches long, roughly obovate in shape, with many lobes. When mature, the two middle sinuses nearly reach the midrib dividing the leaf nearly in half.
This is the acorn of the bur oak. The bur oak acorn is very large – macrocarpa is Latin for “big fruit”. The cap of the acorn is called the involuchre and nearly covers the entire nut and is very hairy. As the acorns mature, the cap and seed will turn brownish tan.
This is called a Chinese Scholar tree. The Scholar tree is a deciduous, round-headed tree growing up to 50 feet or taller with a somewhat open look while young.
It has compound leaves with seven to 17 two-inch-long leaflets.
The pods of Scholar trees appear in the fall and look similar to dangling beads.
This tree is an Atlas cedar. I have several planted down behind my chicken coops not far from a stand of tall white pines. Cedrus atlantica, the Atlas cedar, is a distinctive evergreen. Its silvery blue to bluish-green needles are eye-catching in any landscape.
All members of the genus Cedrus produce upright, barrel-shaped cones. These are male cones, which are smaller than the female cones and don’t stay on the tree for very long.
Cornus kousa is a small deciduous tree that can grow up to 40 feet tall. It is in the flowering plant family Cornaceae. Common names include kousa, kousa dogwood, Chinese dogwood, Korean dogwood, and Japanese dogwood. It is native to East Asia including Korea, China and Japan.
This is a fruit of the kousa which is edible. The soft pulp is sweet with a similar flavor to a ripe persimmon but it also has hard seeds inside.
These are the seeds of the magnolia tree. In the fall after the flowers are long gone, Magnolia seed pods, which resemble exotic-looking cones, spread open to reveal bright red berries. Birds, squirrels, and other wildlife love these tasty fruits. Inside the berries are the magnolia seeds.
I am sure many of you recognize the leaves of the ginkgo. The leaves are unusually fan-shaped, up to three inches long, with a petiole that is also up to three inches long. This shape and the elongated petiole cause the foliage to flutter in the slightest breeze.
Here are fallen ginkgo tree fruits. The most noticeable thing about these is their smell. Have you ever smelled one? It is hard to miss, and the stench is quite disagreeable. The outer, nasty smelling pulp is known botanically as sarcotesta. The ginkgo seeds inside contain urushiol, which is the same chemical that causes poison oak, ivy, and sumac, so always wear gloves and protect your skin whenever handling the fruit.
Here is one seed separated from its fruity encasement. It is a single hard-shelled seed enclosing an edible kernel. The kernels are often roasted and used in Asian cuisines.
Catalpa, Catalpa speciosa, is another tree I love – this one located just outside my carport. Mature catalpas can reach heights of 50 feet or more. They are very showy with their white orchid-like flowers in June, huge leaves, and cigar-shaped fruit.
In autumn, mature catalpa seed pods turn brown and often hang on the tree through late fall and into winter.
This is one of my many Stewartia trees. Stewartia is a species of flowering plant in the family Theaceae, native to Japan and Korea. All varieties are slow-growing, all-season performers that show off fresh bright green leaves in spring. Do you know why I love Stewartia trees? Well, Stewart is my last name after all. However, there is no relation. “Stewartia” is named for Scottish nobleman and botanist, John Stuart, who had imported the plant to his personal London garden. He later served as British prime minister from 1762 to 1763.
Stewartias feature stunning bark that exfoliates in strips of gray, orange, and reddish brown once the trunk attains a diameter of two to three inches.
Stewartias produce woody ovoid capsules of seeds each of which has five seed chambers containing up to four seeds.
And here is a rose bush laden with hips. The rose hip or rosehip, is also called the rose haw and rose hep.
Rose hips are the seed pods of roses. They look like small crab apples and are typically red to orange, but ranges from dark purple to black in some species. Rose hips remain on the plant long after rose blooms fade. I hope these photos help you appreciate the seeds, berries, and cones of the trees and shrubs in your own backyards. They are all beautiful in their own right and important food sources for our woodland friends.
If you live in an area where foliage changes with the seasons, you know how exciting and beautiful this time of year can be.
I love autumn and although the season hasn't yet hit its peak here in Bedford, New York, the changing leaves are providing lots of fall color. I've planted hundreds of trees at my farm, so it's a fantastic place to take in the season's changes and enjoy all it has to offer.
Enjoy these photos.
Here, the changing leaves haven’t quite peaked yet, but the fall foliage is already looking so pretty around the farm. Some trees change early, others late – usually from October to November in the Northeast.
Because of changes in the length of daylight and changes in temperature, leaves stop their food-making process. The chlorophyll breaks down, the green color disappears, and the yellow to gold and orange colors come out and give the leaves part of their fall splendor. London plane trees are among the first to change color in fall from a deep green to yellow brown.
The perimeter around my paddocks displays such wonderful shades of orange, yellow, amber, brown, and green. I love the layers of color created by the changing leaves. Although some autumn coloration occurs wherever deciduous trees are found, the most brightly colored foliage is seen in Canada, the northern United States, Scandinavia, northern and western Europe, the Caucasus region near the Black Sea, Russia, eastern Asia, Argentina, Chile, southern Brazil, Korea, Japan, and New Zealand’s South Island. Here is my grove of American beech trees.
The American beech, Fagus grandifolia, is native to eastern North America and turns a pretty golden-bronze in fall.
Persian parrotia or Persian ironwood is a small upright tree or large, rounded, multi-stemmed shrub. It is related to witch-hazel. The oblong green leaves turn various shades of red, orange and yellow in the fall, often persisting into the winter months.
Here are the weeping hornbeams, Carpinus betulus Pendula, on one side of my “soccer field” where my grandson plays whenever he visits. I love these weeping hornbeams – the branches of these trees gracefully weep creating an umbrella of foliage that reaches the ground. Look closely, the leaves are changing – the foliage turns a bright yellow color in fall.
Up close, one can see the seed catkins hanging from the branches, holding about 10 to 30 seeds each.
Cotinus, the smoke bush, has large round leaves and spectacular autumn color. These leaves are turning scarlet red.
For fall color, the sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, is hard to beat. Its glossy green, star-shaped leaves turn fiery shades of red, orange, yellow and purple in the fall.
Here’s a view through the woodland. Many of these trees are deciduous, meaning they tend to seasonally shed their leaves after showing off their brilliant fall colors.
These sugar maples above my tree peony garden bed also display gorgeous color in fall – the leaves turn vibrant shades of yellow, burnt orange, and red.
These lindens are already turning too. This linden allee runs from the old corn crib to my allée of boxwood.
I extended the allee in 2017. I loved the linden tree allee so much, I decided to extend it all the way down to the chicken coops – I am so pleased with how well it is growing. In time, this section will be as full as the original half.
Here is one of many Japanese maple trees at my farm and one of the two I planted in 2019 after taking down six large evergreens from this area.
My pin oaks, Quercus palustris, have done so well. They are so easy to grow and maintain – they are popular landscape trees.
Looking up, these pin oaks are just starting to turn color. The leaves are changing to yellow and reddish bronze. Once its fall color display is done, pin oaks often retain brown leaves, which persist on the trees through winter.
The pin oak also has an interesting growth habit, with pendulous lower branches, horizontal middle branches, and upright upper branches. Pin oaks normally reach 60 to 70 feet tall but can reach heights of 100 feet.
Here are more maples outside my main greenhouse. Maple fall colors range from yellow to orange to red.
Not far is this striking burning bush shrub with fiery scarlet foliage just starting to show. This bush is as low-maintenance as it is dazzling, making it exceptionally easy to grow as either a single specimen plant or in a grouping.
My Stewartia garden across from the long pergola is bordered on one side by a stand of distinguished bald cypress trees, Taxodium distichum. From this angle, one can see the slight tinge of brown in the center tree – this one is always the first to turn. The fall colors are tan, cinnamon, and fiery orange. Bald cypress shed needlelike leaves. In fact, they get the name “bald” cypress because they drop their leaves so early in the season.
Outside my Winter House, I have three tall weeping katsura trees. These trees also change color – its blue-green foliage turns bright yellow in fall.
Soon, my outdoor grounds crew will be busy blowing all the leaves. I’ll share more photos of the trees in their peak fall colors. What autumn changes are happening where you live? Please share your comments with me in the section below.
The mighty ginkgo tree behind my Summer House continues to thrive after losing one of its big branches.
Ginkgo biloba, commonly known as ginkgo or gingko, and also known as the maidenhair tree, is the only living species in the division Ginkgophyta. It is found in fossils dating back about 300-million years. Native to China, the ginkgo tree is widely cultivated, and was cultivated early in human history. I have several ginkgo trees planted around my home, but the majestic ginkgo in my sunken garden is original to the property and about 250-years old. Although not as large as others I've seen, my tree is quite massive. Not long ago, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, noticed one of its bigger branches broke and fell - most likely from a recent storm. Fortunately, it did not cause too much damage to the plantings below and the cleanup was quick.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
This is the sunken garden behind my Summer House. This parterre garden is very formal and focuses on the giant 250-year old ginkgo tree in the rear. Growing beneath the ginkgo is a beautiful chocolate mimosa tree, a fast-growing, deciduous tree with a wide, umbrella-shaped canopy.
This is how the ginkgo looks filled with beautiful bright green foliage. The ginkgo biloba is one of the most distinct and beautiful of all deciduous trees. It prefers a minimum of four hours of direct, unfiltered sunlight each day. The ginkgo has a cone-like shape when young, and becomes irregularly rounded as it ages.
The leaves of the ginkgo are unusually fan-shaped, up to three-inches long, with a petiole that is also up to three-inches long. This shape and the elongated petiole cause the foliage to flutter in the slightest breeze.
Each mature leaf often has a single vertical slit in the top center. This forms the fan with a cavity in the middle separating it into two lobes. Bi-loba means “with two lobes”.
The trunk of the ginkgo tree is a light brown to brownish-gray bark that is deeply furrowed and highly ridged. The ridges become more pronounced as the tree ages. The trunk circumference of the giant tree measures more than 14-feet.
A couple of weeks ago, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, noticed one of the branches had fallen – possibly struck by lightning during a recent storm.
The branch was pretty large, so it had to be removed in sections. Pasang begins cutting the fallen branch with one of our trusted STIHL chainsaws. STIHL’s most well-known tool is the chainsaw. We use several models here at the farm. STIHL designed and built its first electric chain saw in 1926 and 94 years later, it is still one of its best pieces of equipment. STIHL has chainsaws that are powered by AP 300 S Lithium-Ion Battery and by gas.
Pasang is a very skilled chainsaw operator. He cuts smaller branches first, making sure they are not in the way of any other plants or trees in the area.
These STIHL chainsaws all have a smooth start-up, quick refuelling feature, and are simple to use. We’ve used STIHL’s chainsaws for years.
Some of the branches can be cut using a hand saw. Arborist hand saws are designed to cut quickly in live or dead wood, and the most common pruning saws are curved for increased cutting power.
A mature shade tree can survive the loss of a limb – thankfully, this one was not too major. The broken branch will have to be pruned back to the trunk later. The ginkgo tree is a living fossil, with the earliest leaf fossils dating from 270 million years ago. It was rediscovered in 1691 in China and was brought to this country in the late 1700s.
Some of the leaves of the tree have already started to drop. Here are some on the ground – most are still green, but they will turn yellow in the coming weeks.
The ginkgo leaves turn a brilliant, luminous yellow in mid-fall.
My great ginkgo tree is a female specimen. Female ginkgo trees produce tan-orange oval fruits that fall to the ground in October and November. The most noticeable thing about these is their smell – it is hard to miss, and the stench is quite disagreeable. The outer, nasty smelling pulp is known botanically as sarcotesta.
Ryan assesses the area after the cleanup is complete. There are also dormant hosta plants here as well. I am relieved no other trees were damaged.
Ryan brought in collection of green mimosa trees to add to this space. Mimosa trees are fast-growing, cold weather tolerant, and pollinators absolutely love them.
Mimosa tree leaves are medium green in color, which nicely sets off the bright pink of their spring flowers. They do not change color before they drop. The complex composition of the leaves gives the tree a light, feathery appearance.
These are the beautiful deep-colored leaves of the chocolate mimosa tree on the other side of the ginkgo. These leaves are bronze-green, fern-like leaves that appear in late spring and then become a deeper rich chocolate-burgundy color in summer.
We planted five mimosa trees in the space. They should do well in this location. A mature mimosa grows up to between 20 and 40 feet in height.
And soon, this majestic ginkgo and all the other ginkgo trees around the farm will all turn golden yellow, and then on one day after the first frost, all the leaves will just fall, covering the ground beneath them with a gorgeous carpet of autumnal color. I’ll be sure to share those photos. Stay tuned.
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