Plants and Trees with Beautiful Fall Leaf Colors

I know this is right after most of the leaves have fallen this year, but I thought it would be neat to have a place for all of the different plants that have beautiful Fall leaf colors.

This blueberry picture was taken after the prime colorarion had passesd, with a bolder and brighter coloration a few weeks before this, but I think even now it still looks nice.

It's a double bonus when plants can be both edible and beautiful!

Oregon grapes,  the leaves turn red, look like holly, and don't drop. They make a tart little treat. Roots are medicinal and can make a yellow dye.

Aronia melanocarpa - the true miracle fruit with highest antioxidant levels

Tom Digerness wrote:Oregon grapes,  the leaves turn red, look like holly, and don't drop. They make a tart little treat. Roots are medicinal and can make a yellow dye.

Very neat, I had never heard of this plant. From the pictures I saw online it looks very atttactive with nice looking berries too.

It sounds like it has a lot of other great uses too, what a great plant!

Gurkan Yeniceri wrote:Aronia melanocarpa - the true miracle fruit with highest antioxidant levels

Amazing plant! We have these native in my area, however I have yet to taste or find one, but I admit that I haven't really searched hard for one yet.

Do you eat them fresh, or make them into other things?

For those of you in the Pacific Northwest here are a list of some of our native plants that have really nice fall leaf colors. Some of these are not native to the whole region - the Cascades tend to keep some plants on one side or the other.

- Pacific Dogwood
- Vine Maple
- Big Leaf Maple
- Western Serviceberry
- Paperbark Birch
- Red Osier Dogwood
- Black Hawthorn
- Oregon Ash
- Western Larch
- Quaking Aspen
- Black Cottonwood
- Cascara
- Red Flowering Currant
- Golden Currant
- Nootka Rose

I have found these native plants can be hit or miss in terms of fall colors depending on the year. For example, big leaf maple can be amazing and last year the trees around Olympia looked great. But this year they were not as golden as last year - but this year had a much better seed crop than last year.

Some of these plants also have really nice flowers. Red flowering currant is really great in the early spring and I also really like serviceberry flowers too!

Daron Williams wrote:For those of you in the Pacific Northwest here are a list of some of our native plants that have really nice fall leaf colors. Some of these are not native to the whole region - the Cascades tend to keep some plants on one side or the other.

- Pacific Dogwood
- Vine Maple
- Big Leaf Maple
- Western Serviceberry
- Paperbark Birch
- Red Osier Dogwood
- Black Hawthorn
- Oregon Ash
- Western Larch
- Quaking Aspen
- Black Cottonwood
- Cascara
- Red Flowering Currant
- Golden Currant
- Nootka Rose

I have found these native plants can be hit or miss in terms of fall colors depending on the year. For example, big leaf maple can be amazing and last year the trees around Olympia looked great. But this year they were not as golden as last year - but this year had a much better seed crop than last year.

Some of these plants also have really nice flowers. Red flowering currant is really great in the early spring and I also really like serviceberry flowers too!

Great list Daron, I really like all the diverse colors. I don't know why, but the golden ones have always stuck out to me and are my favorite!

Those red flowering current flowers were awesome too!

Steve Thorn wrote:It's a double bonus when plants can be both edible and beautiful!

Well, in that case...

That looks very nice! What kind of plant is it?

Those are Prima and Sunflower pawpaws (asimina triloba). For 10 years we only had the pretty autumn leaves to look forward to. This year we finally had fruit; 5 years to start flowering + 4 years of various mishaps. It was worth the wait. (But nobody would really mind if it were shorter.)

Crt Jakhel wrote:Those are Prima and Sunflower pawpaws (asimina triloba). For 10 years we only had the pretty autumn leaves to look forward to. This year we finally had fruit; 5 years to start flowering + 4 years of various mishaps. It was worth the wait. (But nobody would really mind if it were shorter.)

Very cool!

I thought they looked familiar. I have a paw paw of unknown variety that is a little younger. It flowered for the first time this year but with no fruit. Hoping to get some first fruit this year too!

Here's a video and some pictures of my Fall blueberries this year with red leaves.



Anybody else had any plants with nice leaf colors this year?

Upstate NY is known for its fall foliage, but Sumac always surprises me with its bright red foliage

Steve Thorn wrote: I have a paw paw of unknown variety that is a little younger. It flowered for the first time this year but with no fruit. Hoping to get some first fruit this year too!

I've been told you need two varieties to set fruit.  You can buy trees grafted with different varieties, if you want just one specimen.

I've got whole groves of wild pawpaw in my woods, but they are supposedly identical sisters and rarely set fruit.

PS: Love the colors posted here.  Thanks for the eye feast.

I'm envious of everyone's fall colors. Around here it seems like everything just goes from green to brown overnight.

I'm not sure what this tree is, but it's one of the few with a bit of autumn color.

This is a photo of two one year old Honeycrisp apple seedlings I planted from seeds. It was interesting to me how the one on the left has red leaves and the one on the right still has very green leaves.

There's more info about these apple trees grown from seed in the thread below.

https://permies.com/t/108096/Growing-Apple-Trees-Seed-Naturally#1036214

blueberries look awesome in the fall.. this pic doesnt even do it justice... i have another somewhere with way more berries but i could not find it


i have to agree with James, sumac is the loudest out there!

Kc Simmons wrote:I'm envious of everyone's fall colors. Around here it seems like everything just goes from green to brown overnight.

I'm not sure what this tree is, but it's one of the few with a bit of autumn color.

I posted the photo on iNaturalist and it was identified as a callery pear.
I've also noticed that Nandina seems to have nice fall/winter foliage, as well as the bright berries that add some color to the drab landscape when everything is dormant.

Red maple, also called swamp maple puts on a pretty good show in the fall.

For me it is not so much the red's of fall, but thee whole mix of colors that makes autumn nice.

I get a lot of red maple seedlings coming up on my property each year, and I love their color too Travis!

I love the fall colors too. In addition to some of my favorites already mentioned here are persimmon, hosta and thimbleberry. Growing behind the hostas is monkshood; toxic apparently but takes no maintenance from me (no supplementary water during our PNW summer droughts!) and is so pretty in mid Oct when a lot of other flowers are done. Other late flowers are aster and sunchokes. Not foliage, but nice to have color when a lot of the garden is turning brown.

I couldn't select just one photo of the magnificent Virginia Creeper....

https://www.google.com/search?q=virginia+creeper&client=firefox-b-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiRuobWp7PnAhUeWRUIHfZdAN0Q_AUoAXoECBMQAw&biw=960&bih=408

Thimbleberry

Just wanted to make sure gingko was on this list. One of the striking yellows of autumn

I really am partial to Gingkos and Red Maples when the leaves turn.

The only negative for Gingkos is when the leaves drop, they seem to all drop at the same time.

Don't know if it's the prettiest (I think my favourite autumn colours are the red nuances) but an odd, cool one is Schisandra chinensis, otherwise known as five-flavour fruit or magnolia vine. Sadly I don't have a picture, since I'm appallingly lazy with my camera, so a description will have to do. Its leaves start out a light, yellowish green. When it puts on autumn colours, at first it's hard to tell, because the leaves just look a tiny bit paler than normal. Then they turn a very, very light yellow, pale gradually and end up... white. Our plants grow next to a quite dark, mossy piece of spruce forest, so the white-ish pale leaves make a nice contrast. Looks really cool at dusk.

greg mosser wrote:Just wanted to make sure gingko was on this list. One of the striking yellows of autumn

My gingkos have been a bit yellow all year - I think they may not like my acid soil! Hopefully they will survive and do better as they get older....Most trees here don't have good autumn colour, (or maybe the leaves blow off as they turn!") probably cherry is the most colourful with bright red and yellow possible. The Aronia melanocarpa is gorgeous as well as it turns with yellow, red, purple and green all at once!