It’s fall foliage season, the time when people from miles away come to northern New England to view the dazzling colors spreading across our mountains, hills and fields. No wonder – Maine is the most forested state in the country.
We enjoy the leaves in our own yards, too. Our red maples have crimson foliage that’s especially stunning, and the sugar maples are beautiful, too. Birches provide bright yellows, while oaks are more orange, russet or golden. Not all properties can accommodate trees the size of those fabulous producers of fall foliage. Luckily, many smaller plants also provide brightly colored leaves in the fall.
For decades burning bush, Euonymous Alatus, was the must-have fall foliage shrub, but it turns out it’s highly invasive and was on the state’s first do-not-sell list for invasive plants in Maine. We pulled ours out almost 20 years ago, yet we’re still weeding out occasional seedlings.
A wonderful alternative are high-bush blueberries, which turn bright red to purple in the fall. Not to mention the flavorful berries they produce in mid-summer. Sadly, our plants, and those of several of our neighbors, had an off-year for fruit. I hope the foliage makes up for it.
Low-bush blueberries also look great in fall, carpeting the ground in Washington County in red. They are less striking, more of a ground cover really, in suburban yards. Both kinds of blueberries are native to Maine and are helpful to wildlife.
Another native shrub that produces red foliage is red chokeberry, or Aronia arbutifolia. Straight from the bush, the berries are too sour for many people, but wildlife absolutely loves them. They also make excellent jam and jelly.
Viburnums are another outstanding fall-foliage shrub. Though the arrival of the viburnum leaf beetle in 1994 made many people give up on this wonderful family of shrubs, many varieties have shown strong resistance to the beetle.
We have two types of native viburnum: Viburnum cassinoides (witherod), which is shade tolerant, and Viburnum lentago (nannyberry), which is resistant to the beetles and has attractive flowers and foliage. We also like Viburnum carlesii, an import from Asia that also goes by the names Mayflower and Koreanspice viburnum. It has fragrant flowers that range from pink to white, red berries and thick foliage that turns bronzy purple in the fall.
The small-leaved rhododendron has surprisingly pretty fall foliage. The most common one, which you see in bloom everywhere in these parts in the spring, is the PJM. In the fall, it turns deep red, and as the winter progresses, it becomes a darker purple. It’s attractive three out of four seasons: There’s a reason this plant is everywhere.
Clethra, or Summersweet, too, provides beauty late in the season. The highly fragrant flowers appear in late August, followed by golden yellow foliage in the fall.
Another stunner is Redvein Enkianthus. The upright plant produces nodding bell-shaped flowers in late summer to early fall and orange-red leaves in the fall. This plant makes me nostalgic. It won the Cary Award in 1997, the first year the New England Botanical Garden at Tower Hill gave out the awards. The awards ended in 2019, and I miss the column ideas I got from them.
You don’t need to wait for fall to enjoy plants with colored foliage. Physocarpus (Ninebark), for one, has it all season, as do some Japanese maples, coral bells (heucheras now comes in a rainbow of colors) and some grasses.
But speaking for myself, I get most enjoyment from watching as the change in color happens.
Tom Atwell is a freelance writer gardening in Cape Elizabeth. He can be contacted at: tomatwell@me.com.
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