Seeing Red

The foliage is still there on some if the trees and shrubs in our garden and is fading fast. Most of what remains now has a reddish hue in the leaves but in some cases what remains isn’t just the leaves.

The ‘Shasta’ viburnum is showing red in the last few of it’s remaining leaves. In my garden it’s the first viburnum to drop leaves, the Burkwood and arrowwood viburnums still haven’t begun their color changes yet while the snowball viburnum is completely naked.

Here the ‘Constellation’ dogwood’s mottled foliage shows some red hues also. The brown tips are evidence of the dryness we had this summer. I’m still waiting to see that “perfect” gardening season!

This dogwood leaf is on a tree along the back fence line from a Cornus florida dogwood. It blooms white when it blooms. Before too long I need to gather some berries to stratify over the winter and try to grow some dogwood saplings.

And the Bradford pear tree (which you should never plant) is nearly on fire with red orange foliage. It also has a fair number of fruit that will be freely sown by the mockingbirds to spread invasive hybrid pears everywhere!

But like I said before the red isn’t only in the leaves! The Nandina domestica berries are a bright red.

And the red is also in the bark of these red twig dogwood shrubs. It’s one of my favorite plants for winter color. It’s easy to propagate more just by sticking 6-8 inch stems in moist soil. As long as the soil is kept moist over the winter they will root. This little one was propagated last winter/spring and placed near the shed. I have a few others that have three foot stems on them.