fall foliage: just in time for winter

South­ern Cal­i­for­nia gets fall foliage col­ors too. If there’s a sin­gle tree that we can point to it would have to be the south­ern sweet­gum, Liq­uidambar styraci­flua. You see planted all over, so much that you might call it a cliche–But how can you can some­thing so sat­is­fy­ing a cliche? To me it’s one of the com­fort foods of plants, espe­cially now that the weather has turned cool and thoughts turn towards winter.

Liquidambar Leaves

Liq­uidambar Leaves

My own asso­ci­a­tions with the plant go back years. My mother planted a tree of the clone ‘Bur­gundy’ in front of the Los Angeles-area house where I spent many of my child­hood years. The tree pro­duced red to pur­ple leaves in the fall, depend­ing on the weather con­di­tions, and proved to be a favorite back­drop for a num­ber of fam­ily Thanks­giv­ing pic­tures. When my par­ents retired to Ocean­side, my mother started a sapling in from of the new home.

The plant is planted so much you might almost think it’s a native. But instead it hails from the Amer­i­can South–some com­pen­sa­tion for their alli­ga­tors and mos­qui­toes. In some loca­tions it has escaped into the wilds, but seems to be much less of a prob­lem than many other plants.

Liquidambars at UCSD

Liq­uidambars at UCSD

This is a plant­ing at the UCSD cam­pus, pho­tographed this week between rain­storms. The plants began col­or­ing up a month or more ago. Unlike aspens or maples or other plants with amaz­ing autumn foliage, some liq­uidambar clones can hold on to their leaves through much of the win­ter. In fact, there was a year where big stands of it still had dark pur­ple foliage hang­ing on the branches, even as the new growth was emerg­ing in the spring.

What a weird year that was, a sign that some­times we seem to escape hav­ing a gen­uine win­ter. But we do get autum. And liq­uidambars are the proof.

December 19 2008 01:05 pm | Categories: gardening • plant profiles | Tags: • • • •

3 Responses to “fall foliage: just in time for winter”

  1. Philip on 19 Dec 2008 at 8:59 pm #

    That is so true! You have described it beau­ti­fully: Your own expe­ri­ence and your past.
    What a spot on post for Cal­i­for­nia, James.
    Sin­cerely,
    Philip

  2. Jenny on 19 Dec 2008 at 9:51 pm #

    The sweet­gum is a great tree. They re-seed read­ily here in the south– I’m always pulling out seedlings.

    Grow­ing up in Socal we had one in the front yard. The only draw­back was the rolly balls (aka seed pods) that would fall on the front walk. Deadly if you stepped on one unexpectedly.

  3. lostlandscape on 20 Dec 2008 at 10:26 am #

    Thanks, Philip. Hope­fully you’ve got some up near you to enjoy this time of year!

    And Jenny, yes, those rolly polly seed pods can be a real haz­ard, espe­cially if they fall onto con­crete. To keep the num­ber of pedes­trian face-plants into con­crete to a min­i­mum, the cam­pus has the grounds crews out every morn­ing to blow off the walk­ways. In fact, of the two fig­ures in the UCSD pic­ture, the per­son on the right is some­one with a leaf­blower. But don’t get me started on gas-powered leaf­blow­ers: loud, fume-belching mon­strosi­ties. No won­der L.A. has banned them in favor of elec­tric models.

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