One of the consolations of this period, as we slide into what is quite definitely becoming winter, is the colour of the foliage around us. Among imports there are Japanese maple and American oak, flaming away as the hours close in on us. You can get brilliant colours on wild cherry, even crab-apple leaves, and some people go more for the mild yellow of the fading ash leaves rather than the lovely rich brown of beech. As to maples, there are so many strains, but all have their qualities. But the most overlooked of all leaf colourings is that of the dogwood.
Now dog as a prefix, Richard Mabey tells us, need not be meant in a disparaging way, for dog in this case is derived from the word dag meaning a skewer or spike, a version with which the great H.L. Edlin agrees. Anyway dogwood, if grown with some protection, gets this corner's vote as the most exuberant and varied leaf of them all. You can have your amelanchier (bright and cheerful but losing its rosy leaves early) or liquid-amber, which at this time is still surly and green, showing little sign of its later purple glory; but dogwood, if living with some cover, beats them all.
You may see the brilliant red stalks of this shrub along our roadways, but wind and traffic ensure an early leaf-fall. Plucked at the weekend, a few leaves on a driveway hedge, only modestly protected from the west wind but well covered from the east, showed in Sunday's brilliant light the following range of colours: the first leaf had a lemon yellow left half, spotted with pinpoints of russet, the right half still green, the veins standing out as if about to do something spectacular. Next leaf: perfect yellow all over.
Next - all these are as big as your hand - brilliant sunset red with purple splotches at the tip. Next, deep bronze with green veins standing out against it. Next a dark purple leaf, almost blending into black. You could go along the 40 yards of this hedge and meet every colour in the spectrum. In a few days the dominant new colour will be a shade of purple, offset by a pasty, faded yellow. On the west-facing side, almost all the leaves are gone, as they are on the roadways, leaving the brilliant red stalks and branches to glitter in the evening sun.
You do need shelter to get these effects and the frustration is that you cannot hope to preserve some of this magnificence by pressing the leaves in books. They lose colour. Can anyone come up with a preserving formula for this magnificent leafage? A gift from Bill Dallas of Martry, near Navan.
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