October 23, 2008
Trees for Fall Color--Guest Blogger Danny Cain
In the most recent blog entry here at Backyard Wisdom, we welcomed Danny Cain. He is the county Extension coordinator in Walker County, which is in northwest Alabama. Two of Danny’s particular work areas include forestry and home grounds.
In today’s blog post, he offers his thoughts on trees that are both suitable to Alabama and offer good fall color.
Trees for Fall Color
By the way, speaking of brilliant fall color, if you are looking for a couple great looking trees that offer some of the best fall color that Alabama has to offer try planting a Chinese pistache tree (not to be confused with the tree that produces pistachio nuts). It is a great medium-sized tree that will add color to any Walker County landscape and is even a good urban tree for high use areas in our urban landscapes.
The flowers of the Chinese pistache tree are very inconspicuous at best, but the long clusters of purple-red fruit can be very attractive. It has a medium texture and its compound leaves are usually a deep dark green during the summer. But that’s not the best part. The best part is its fall color in brilliant red-orange that will rival any sugar maple in the country! Another great thing about Chinese pistache trees is that they are extremely tough and will adapt to a wide variety of soil conditions. They are also very drought tolerant after they get established.
The Chinese pistache is an “ugly duckling” tree as a juvenile, often having a crooked trunk and unruly branches. After about three to five years; however, it begins to mature into an arching tree with an oval-rounded canopy reaching a height of 30 to 50 feet when it is full grown. Just trust me on this one, forget about the name, overlook the three to five years when the tree doesn’t look so good but go ahead and plant one or two Chinese pistache trees and look forward (a few years down the road) to some of the best fall tree color you have ever seen.
A ginkgo tree is another example of a tree that will work in local landscapes that also has great fall color—in this case yellow. It also has very interesting fan shaped foliage during the summer time. Have patience if you decide to plant ginkgo as it is not necessarily the fastest growing tree around to say the least. One additional thing, if you decide to use ginkgo make sure that you purchase certified male plants to avoid problems down the road with fruit that will drop off the tree and create odor problems. Certified male ginkgo trees will produce no fruit.
Here are a few other trees (some of them are natives as well) that you may want to consider for fall color :
downy serviceberry (yellow or orange)
flowering dogwood (maroon/burgundy)
or perhaps even black gum (red).
The Department of Forestry at Virginia Tech University has an excellent web page that lists a number of trees with links to photos of their fall foliage.
There is also a time lapse photography sequence of a stand of trees changing color at the Virginia Tech Web site.
Posted by lawremc at October 23, 2008 08:52 AM | TrackBack