Common Witch-hazel (Hamaelis virginiana) is a shrub or tree, 10-25 feet tall, that defies the odds and blooms from September through November.  Its ragged yellow flowers aren’t noticable during October’s splash of colors but now they stand alone, odd but beautiful.

Witch-hazel has other odd traits.

• Though it blooms in the fall, it doesn’t set fruit until the following August, nearly a year later.
• Just before it blooms the old fruit explodes, dispersing seeds up to 20 feet away.
• Witch-hazel can find water; its branches are used as divining rods.  (Is that the “witch” part?)
• And you probably have witch-hazel in your medicine cabinet, an extract from its bark.

Witch-hazel is a good tree for wildlife as its buds, seeds and twigs provide food for ruffed grouse, pheasants, bobwhite, deer, rabbits and beaver.

It’s good for me too because it makes me happy to see the winter bloom.

See Chuck Tague’s October 9th blog for close-ups of witch-hazel’s flowers and seeds.   Photo by Dianne Machesney.

Compared to the beautiful twigs Chuck photographed this one looks positively wicked.  So what is it?  Here are some hints.

1. This bud is as fat as your thumb and covered in thorns.
2. It grows on a tree that’s only 5 to 15 feet tall.
3. The trunk is very thorny too and only 1 to 4 inches in diameter.
4. The bud will sprout very large twice- or thrice-compound leaves that are 2 to 4 feet long!
5. The flower is one huge flat-topped cluster that blooms July to September.
6. Its fleshy, black fruit droops from the top of the tree.  The berries are such good food for birds that when you find a stand of these trees in autumn you’ll find a flock of robins, too.
7. The name of this tree evokes Halloween.

And it is… (drum roll) … Devil’s Walking Stick (Aralia spinosa), also called Hercules-club.  The trunk is so narrow it resembles a walking stick but only the Devil would dare grasp it.

Want to look at pretty buds now?  Check out This Bud’s for You.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

A week ago I visited the Clarion River in Jefferson County where I noticed that even the oaks were bare.  At the Allegheny Front last Sunday the leaves on the mountain had fallen but in the valley the oaks were russet, the tulip trees golden.  In the valley the leaves were putting on a final show.  By now it’s probably over.

However, the show isn’t over yet if you have non-native trees in your area.  Trees from northern locations are out of sync with our photo period so most of them still have leaves, some are green. 

Our native maples lost their leaves two weeks ago.  The maples you see now with yellow and green leaves are Norway maples which respond to the amount of light they receive in Norway in October – about 10 hours per day.  Pittsburgh’s days aren’t that short until early November so these foreign maples are delayed.  They’re on Norway time.

Eventually even the non-natives will catch up.  How will I know when all the leaves are gone?  When I don’t have to rake anymore.

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

Above the fog the sky is clear, the sun shining.  Both fog and frost will be gone soon.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

Why aren’t our black-and-orange birds associated with Halloween?  Probably because Baltimore orioles, American redstarts and Blackburnian warblers are small and harmless and they’ve migrated out of North America by late October.  Instead the smart and crafty crows and ravens are symbols of this spooky holiday.  Black is in and the crows are in town.

For the color orange you can’t beat pumpkins.  Did you know that pumpkins are native to the Americas but they’re now grown around the world?  The major pumpkin-growing countries are the U.S., Mexico, India and China.  Pennsylvania is one of the top five pumpkin producing states so when I buy a pumpkin I’m “buying local.”

This Halloween we get a bonus.  We’ll turn our clocks back tonight and get an extra hour of sleep.  The bad news is that the sun will set at 5:07pm on Sunday and the black of night will descend upon us an hour earlier. 

Happy Halloween!

(photo by Chuck Tague)

These are the green leaves and red pedicels of Sassafras (Sassafras albidum), a medium to large-sized tree that’s unusual in several ways:

• Its leaves have three distinct shapes:  smooth egg, two-lobed mitten, and three-lobed fingers.  Click here to see the shapes.
• Its bead-like deep blue fruit stands up on each bright red stalk and is eaten by birds and bears so quickly that I rarely see it.  Click here to see the fruit on the stem.  Pretty amazing, huh?
• Its twigs are browsed by rabbits and deer.
• And Sassafras is food for humans too.  We (used to!) make tea from the roots’ outer bark and gumbo filé from powdered leaves.  Scroll down to the third paragraph here for more information on its edible qualities.

Sassafras says “eat me” and birds oblige.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

First, wrap the seed in a very sour, very hard pulp.  Then wrap the pulp in a colorful covering that lasts a long time.  The fruit is so hard and sour that no one will eat it.  So why bother making fruit?

Ah, but wait.  As fall turns to winter, frost breaks down the pulp and takes the extreme sour edge off the fruit.  At this point the birds who remain through the winter have something to eat. 

Theoretically this strategy of feeding winter birds would guarantee the seeds don’t disperse far, but the plant has spread thanks to people.  In colonial times we figured out how to add sugar and make jams and jellies from it, and we like its color so much that we plant it as an ornamental. 

Quite a success story for Cranberry Viburnum, a beautiful but sour fruit.

(photo by Tim Vechter)

Right now our maples are showing off their oranges, reds and yellows while our ash trees wear pastel yellow and pale violet. 

Soon the maples and ashes will lose their leaves but we’ll get a second burst of color from the oaks – ochre, rust and burgundy. 

Enjoy it now.  The trees will be bare in November. 

(photo by Dianne Machesney of Latodami Nature Center at North Park)

Look at the forest floor and you may see this Indian Cucumber.  It’s all decked out in green, red and blue to attract passing birds.  The colors are arranged like a bull’s eye, circling the berries.  “Eat me!” it says to the birds.  And they oblige.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

No, these aren’t tomatoes.  They’re related to tomatoes, but don’t eat them.  They’re poisonous.

These are the fruits of Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara), a common weed in North America that’s native to Europe and Asia.  Click on the photo to see its flowers.

Until I did the research for this blog, I called this plant Deadly Nightshade but that’s the common name for a completely different and far more deadly plant, Atropa Belladonna.  Belladonna is so poisonous that 2-5 of its deep blue berries can kill a child, 10-20 berries or a single leaf can kill an adult. In Ancient Rome the aristrocracy found it quite effective for killing their rivals.

Both plants are in the Nightshade family (Solanaceae) which includes a wide variety of edible and poisonous species.  The edible plants are so tasty that humans went to the trouble of cultivating them: potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, chili peppers and paprika.  The toxic plants are beautiful but dangerous: Deadly Nightshade, Bittersweet Nightshade, Mandrake and Jimson Weed (Datura), to name a few.

Somewhere in humanity’s past, people had to figure out which plants were good to eat and which weren’t.   What a risky business!  I’m glad that job is done and we’re able to pass on the knowledge.

Meanwhile, don’t worry that you’ll mistake these berries for tomatoes.  Bittersweet Nightshade berries are tiny and the plant smells bad.

(photos by Chuck Tague)