“The Japanese maple is undoubtedly the most variable species, so far as foliage is concerned, of cultivated trees or shrubs…. While in other ornamental plants, especially in herbaceous ones, variation frequently occurs in flowers, here the ornamental feature depends mainly on the leaves, and sometimes also on the shape of the plant.
“This great variation is brought out by intensive cultivation and selection in the Japanese garden. The species has been cultivated there since very early times for the brilliant red foliage in autumn so frequently praised in poetry and depicted in paintings. The Japanese call it ‘Takao maple’ because it is especially abundant on the mountain Takao, famous since ancient times for autumn coloration. They use it extensively in their gardens and also as a potted dwarf tree…
“The Japanese maple is a shrub or small tree. It is native to Japan and adjacent parts of the Asiatic mainland. In the Japanese literature there are hundreds of named forms, many of which are now also in cultivation in Western gardens. The variation may be either in the color or the shape of the leaves or sometimes in a combination of these two characters….
“In color, the leaves vary from bright green to yellow and different shades of red or purple. They turn yellow to orange or red in the autumn.”
For decades you’ve lightened us in every season of the year Your small veined leaves in early spring speak greenly of life and promise and health so soundly standing there of bare trunk and crowded limb There in the prime of summer your luring red leaves — flirting with ripe appeal And even more — my autumn beauty you offer mature foliage a russet-red unspeakable glimpse beyond breath or word
Hello!
I took the photos in this post (and the next one) whilst gathering some outdoor winter color for my Christmas project (see Seven Days to Christmas: When Nature Does the Decorating) — but didn’t use them back then (which seems like YEARS ago, for some reason). The photos are of various Japanese Maple shrubs, trees, and leaves at their peak autumn color (or slightly past it) — which maybe fills in a gap as we wait patiently for the appearance of pre-spring buds and new flowers around the ‘hood.
“Nandina domestica grows, as it should with such a specific name, close to the house, and as it does in Japan, where every garden, however small, possesses a specimen close by the door….
“One would like to think it was so favoured on account of its beauty, but I have been told that it produces wood with an aromatic flavour that is valued by the Japanese as being the most tasty and suitable for a toothpick. If this be true the poetry of the name domestica vanishes, so let us hope it is false….
“Anyway, I grow the plant for its beauty, and like to remember that Celestial Bamboo is one of its old names. It does well here, I believe, chiefly because it is shaded by a screen of Ivy from the southern sunshine, and it is practically evergreen, only losing its leaves after severe winters….
“My plant is five feet high and beautiful all the year, perhaps most especially so when the young leaves are every imaginable shade of crimson, copper, and bronze, and contrast with the deep green old ones…. The fine red berries that are produced freely in warmer countries, and especially in the gardens round Pau, where they are largely used for Christmas decorations, are never ripened here, or it might well be at its best in Winter.”
“By the nineteenth century European botanic gardens, most notably the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, were sending botanists on plant-hunting expeditions and establishing colonial botanic gardens as outposts to hold and propagate plants destined to be sent back to parent institutions. Scotland’s Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh was also active in funding expeditions to remote areas. Its roster of intrepid botanical explorers includes David Douglas, 1799-1834, for whom the Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) of northwestern America is named, and Robert Fortune, 1812-1880, whose plant-hunting skills are immortalised in the Euonymus fortunei.
“Partly because of the exciting discoveries of these explorers, botanic gardens also became horticultural showcases, thus stimulating the growth of the nursery industry and the introduction of exotic plants into private gardens during this period.”
Hello!
Both nandina and euonymus are considered evergreen shrubs, and easy to find all around the southeast (and in many parts of the world). I seem to see them most often in the winter, probably because the color of their leaves shifts along with the rest of the autumn leaves; but unlike trees, both shrubs tend to hang onto their leaves all winter. So I spy them as splashes and shades of red, purple, or pink from late winter through early spring, while much of the rest of the landscape has gone leafless. Some of their leaves will drop into colorful piles at the base of the plant, but those that stay put will do so until new leaves push them off their stems. The berries are often red or pink (see, for example, photos at the bottom of my post Seven Days to Christmas: When Nature Does the Decorating); but occasionally I see some that are especially adorable in yellow or orange.
Until I found the quote from E. A. Bowles about nandina above, I wasn’t aware of the Japanese custom of planting them near a front door. It surprised me because there is one nandina — the only one on my property — growing near my front door, oddly stuck and surrounded by concrete in a small space between the front porch steps and the outside wall of my living room. Despite being cut to the ground — and enduring waterfalls of rain from the roof just above it — it has returned every year since 2005, producing a handful of thin stems with slender green leaves, then changing color and producing berries every fall.
I had always thought my nandina was a displaced invader — assuming it had grown from a seed that had blown in and taken root — and have cut it down several times. Now, after reading Bowles, I wonder if someone planted it there on purpose — as an oriental greeting, a symbol that means “Welcome to my house.” I suppose I’ll treat it differently now — let it grow a little wild, I think — as this bit of mystery-history is something I won’t forget.
The first ten photos below are of several euonymus shrubs, “euonymus” being a word I kept misspelling as “eunonymous” (you know, like: I’m anonymous and you’re you-non-ymous) — but now I think I got it right. Their leaves tend to be round or teardrop-shaped, clearly different from the slim, pointed nandina leaves in the next seven photos. These seventeen images are followed by three of each shrub, with their backgrounds rendered in black.
Over my cliff is a maple tree That always delights my heart to see.
In some stormy day its smooth bole fell And now lies prone where it started well.
Its trunk is scarred, and with branchlets weak That struggle still to the light they seek.
But straight to the blue its new limbs rise And spread their leaves to the rains and skies.
One would not know from the verdant crown That winds had beaten the old trunk down.
Its neighbors stern in the forest grim Stand stiff and strict and all churchly prim.
But its branches spread more wide than they And fling their fruits to the winds away.
And panellings fine its bole will make When the artist comes his part to take.
Over my cliff is a broken tree That it always cheers my heart to see.
Hello!
I have on several earlier posts quoted (click here!) from Liberty Hyde Bailey’s botanical work The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture (which is so big I call it a “cyclopspedia”) — but had somehow missed the fact that Bailey was also a poet and published several books of poetry in the olden days. So I was pleased to come across his poem about a broken tree to go with the photos below: the poem seemed to mirror my brief obsession with photographing these damaged trees.
The first nine photos below feature the broken-trunk trees I came across in early winter — two that had likely split during last summer’s August thunderstorms; and one that must have come down during autumn’s similarly stormulous days, given that the leaves had switched on their fall shades before the tree came down. The color contrasts caught my eye — the dark fallen branches against red and orange groundcover, and the orange leaves against the pebblestone walkway. The first ones almost look like the tree dropped a section to rake up the leaves. I didn’t actually catch them raking leaves, to be honest — but maybe they only do that when no one’s watching.
