Beautiful! I love seeing all the different ways color is displayed this time of year. Here in New England, it’s the sugar maple, hands down, for the best color array (red, orange, yellow) in trees. This is my red maple (toxic to goats in case you didn’t know)
Burning bush is another colorful planting as well as the lowly staghorn sumac (I agree with another commenter, it’s underrated!). My evening primrose leaves are beautiful in the fall, they make a beautiful red skirt under two of my “lawn” apple trees.
My bartlett pear has nice yellow leaves right now…its not too bad for a fruit tree…very late though…this year has been perfect for fall colors. The maples are gorgeous…really a hard maple is almost a perfect tree…good shade, good fall color, wood excellent for wood working or firewood. I think you can tap them for syrup.
One thing i use to always notice when early spring fishing for walleyes is usually the bite was on when the river was full of helicopters from all the maples that grew along the sloughs of the Mississippi…super common river tree.
Haven’t seen any pretty Bartlett trees here. The Bradford and callery seedlings are pretty though. Thanks for sharing perspectives from another part of the US.
There are so many great recommendations here. One small tree that’s less common in gardens, but also provides a great winter interest is the European Spindle or Euonymus europaeus. Its wine red leaves are accentuated by bright pink and orange fruit. The unusually-shaped, poisonous fruits hang on the tree all winter and look especially beautiful against a pale winter sky. If the look of the native plant doesn’t appeal to you, there are selections with varying fruit color and size.
Out here in the West, our alkaline pH rules out a lot of options on good fall-color trees. Red and Silver maples are often chlorotic, as are Sugar Maples if not planted on the right site. Bigtooth Maple, Sugar Maple’s western cousin, is the best we have for native fall color, but it is rarely used in cultivated landscapes (which is a shame). Paperbark maple can do well here, but so few people know about them that it is rarely planted.
I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned Cotinus, particularly Cotinus obovatus, American Smoketree. It has fall color that easily rivals Sugar Maple. I’ve planted a small one this fall, here’s hoping it survives the winter. My brother’s tree in the same neighborhood that I planted for him the year before had some hints of color, but also scorch after our exceptionally hot and dry summer, it may not come into its own until another season or two, once our drought eases up a bit.
In the spirit of the forum’s name, I think it’s always worth looking at what fruit trees have good fall color. American persimmons are very rare here, but seem to show potential for good growth in our soils. One at a local botanical garden, a ‘Meader’, seems to have a nice show of yellow each fall. I hear that ‘Wabash’ was reputed to have good fall color among American persimmon cultivars, but almost no one grows it anymore, to my knowledge.
