Through the Seasons at the Morton Arboretum: Then and Now (September)
With summer flowers faded and autumnal foliage coloring still several weeks in the offing, the period from late August through September finds a few woody plants in the Arboretum putting forth blossoms. The brilliance of ripening fruit, advance hints of fall leaf color, and supplementary displays of native herbaceous plants more than compensate for the deficiency, however, and fill most effectively this difficult gap. — Lowell Kammerer, Through the Seasons at the Morton Arboretum, 1942
I love the way my grandpa describes the liminal period between summer and fall. Despite his mention of this as a “difficult gap” in the season, When I visited the Arboretum this past week, I found it still overwhelmingly green, displaying subtle touches of color in the form of berries/fruit and a few scattered trees showing leaves just beginning to think about turning for autumn. Following my grandfather’s guidance on what to look for at the Arboretum in September, I sought out trees and shrubs that should be displaying a veritable rainbow of fruit this time of year - and was not disappointed!
The number of fruiting shrubs is legion, as a tour of the Arboretum at this time reveals.
While I didn’t happen upon a Cornelian Cherry, which my grandfather described as “always highly decorative, but especially so when bejeweled with much elongated drupes of brightest scarlet,” I did find a Flowering Dogwood that sported very similar bunches of bright red, elongated fruit:
Not too far away, in the collection of Korean trees and shrubs, the Korean Mountain-Ash showed beautiful bursts of green-to-white, slightly grey, berries:
And the American (and European) Cranberry-Bushes provided stunning pops of color:
The area around Crabapple Lake on the East side revealed a wealth of (surprise!) Crabapple fruits on display
There are two genera which on the basis of their ornamental fruit surpass all others. These are the Hawthorns and Crabapples.
Crabapples in order of appearance: May’s Delight Crabapple (Malus ‘May’s Delight’), David Crabapple (Malus ‘David’), Malus ‘Redbird’, Kirk Crabapple (Malus ‘Kirk’), Red Peacock Crabapple (Malus ‘Red Peacock’), Malus spontanea ‘Makino’, Pink Satin Crabapple (Malus ‘Pink Satin’), Donald Wyman Crabapple (Malus ’Donald Wyman’), Woven Gold Crabapple (Malus ‘Woven Gold’), Crabapple - Morning Sun (Malus ‘Joy Morton’), Alexis Crabapple (Malus ‘Alexis’)
I cannot recommend enough that you spend some time taking in the incredibly varied hues of late summer/early fall’s fruit, especially if you’re able to make it over to the Arboretum’s East side around Crabapple Lake. Independent of season, the Arboretum has much to offer in way of both sweeping views and small treasures.
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