[ Lost in the Landscape ]

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.

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.

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 | Categories: gardening • plant profiles | Tags: fall • Liquidambar styraciflua • seasons • sweetgum • UCSD | 3 Comments »