Fairest of the fall

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Canada does a good job of fall. It's one of the reasons we have a national flag that pays homage to a tree. After a spring of yielding sugar and a summer of providing shade, the sugar maple gives itself a standing ovation in the fall by turning into a beacon of gold and red. Its beauty is echoed by different maples across the country and by many other plants that refuse to go gently into that good night of winter. You wouldn't likely choose a plant for fall interest alone, but there are dozens that look especially beautiful as the season comes to a close.

Few see as wide a variety of plants on a day-to-day basis as the people who work at botanical gardens, so I asked some of these Canadians to name their favourites for fall colour.

Aronia melanocarpa 'Autumn Magic' is one of the choices of Wilf Nicholls, director of the Memorial University Botanical Garden in St. John's, Nfld. This black chokeberry has brilliant wine red fall foliage, which is further decorated with "really wonderful shiny black berries that last into winter, after the leaves fall. It's a nice compact shrub that's hardy across the country," he says.

Cornus stolonifera, syn. C. sericea (red osier dogwood), is lan Dymock's favourite. Dymock, propagation horticulturist and greenhouse manager at the University of Alberta Devonian Botanic Garden in Devon, Alta., says, "Around here, almost all the trees and shrubs turn yellow in fall. You need something that turns red. When, you drive over the bridge across the North Saskatchewan River in fall, you can see a band of red where the dogwoods are." Garden selections of this shrub include 'Cardinal', 'Flaviramea' and 'Kelsey's Dwarf', all of which are hardy to Zone 2. They have the added attraction of brightly coloured twigs after the leaves fall.

Cotinus 'Grace' is recommended by Bruce Macdonald, director of the botanical garden at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The university introduced this smoke tree (and developed Aronia melanocarpa ‘Autumn Magic', the plant that was chosen by Nicholls). The purplish orange leaves, much larger than those of other smoke trees, turn brilliant scarlet and bronze in fall. There are large clusters of purple-pink flowers in summer. It's hardy to Zone 5.