October 10th: Seeds, Late Blossoms and Fall Color

Vetch leaves: the vetch is pretty much done, but its characteristic leaves are still green.

I call this three-vein low-leaf, because I don't know what it is. Do you? The mysterious three-vein is turning paler.

The Burdock plant is dead, but the burrs are full of vital seeds. These burrs will stick to anything that passes near, but one, slightly open and revealing a bit of floss, hints at a second option: the wind.

Low to the ground, tucked into the underbrush, sits a cluster of mushrooms.

The rather cryptic flowers of the lambs-quarters are unchanged, although the leaves look more tattered then ever.

Hawkweed is still producing yellow flowers,

     but the goldenrod is all fuzzy seed-heads.

The mugwort looks much the same, but its leaves, like so many, are turning yellow.

A burdock leaf is starting to turn yellow.

Black raspberry leaves are just starting to show the slightest hint of dark red.

The raspberry leaves are still green.

        Here we see some bright yellow bittersweet leaves.

Fall colors are also seen in the relentlessly climbing poison ivy, the small, rather beset maple tree, and the hawthorn all seen above.

For the calico aster this is the height of the blooming season, and we see large, dense clusters of blooms.

A closeup reveals the characteristic flower centers, some purple and some yellow, along with rather tattered appearance of the flowers themselves.

           A small aside about the color: As a child I loved the brilliant fall colors in Connecticut, but it was not until I went to college in Ohio that I came to realize that the color of my childhood, while not unique, is not seen everywhere. Fall in Ohio is entirely yellow, lacking the fiery reds and oranges we have in New England.