I want to point out this tree by the lake, it’s always the first to turn. The orange begins at the very top and over a week or two gradually works its way down. I’ve never gone up close to it, but every year my daughter and I discuss it as we drive past in the mornings: isn’t it lovely, why that one, why is it always so much earlier than the others and isn’t it perhaps a even little earlier than last year? I think it’s an ash; in the spring they’re the last to get leaves and they’re the first trees to lose them in the autumn (but in between, you can practically see them growing). My wife says it’s a maple, that ash doesn’t turn a bright red. She could be right.
Update. 11 Sept. Armed with empty’s agreement (below) that it’s a maple, my wife confronted me this morning with a picture of a spisslønn, another Norwegian kind of maple that goes red from the top downwards. She says that’s what it is, and I give in.
A Bad Guide 
A lovely picture. The leaves are starting to turn a bit in the Valley as well, early because of the hot dry summer.
I’m just dropping in for a quick visit — I’m staying with jamessal’s family in the runup to the wedding and having a great time discussing Russian literature with his mom and movies and the ’60s with his uncle and sampling his (j’sal’s) enthusiastically proffered rare scotches and bourbons and beers. I regret to report that Robin has been feeling lousy (I haven’t even seen her yet); we’re all hoping she feels better today — tonight is the rehearsal dinner.
More when I get a chance. Give my best to the ash tree, and of course the goats.
Thanks for the report. I’m very sorry for Robin, let’s hope things pick up. Otherwise, we are very envious and wish we were there.
Do you have horse chestnut trees locally, Crown? I ask because ours are all diseased; their leaves turn brown, curl and drop in summer – it’s a sad sight. Given that we lost almost all our elms 30 or 40 years ago, the prospect of losing our conker trees is particularly disagreeable.
That’s awful, dearie. Is that a national thing or East Anglia? Yes, we have an avenue of conker trees down the road from us. I had to show the children what to do with them, though. I haven’t seen anything wrong with the trees, but I’ll take a closer look.
There are lots of horse-chestnut trees in France, especially along the streets of cities in the Northern half of the country. Apparently the first baby tree was imported into France from India, carried by a famous botanist in his hat, at some point in the 18th century. It was planted in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, the first botanical garden, where it is still growing.
When I was in school, the schoolyear started on October 1st (as it had in my parents’ time) and memories of school starting are indelibly linked to memories of walking along sidewalks strewn with horse-chestnut leaves, kicking up the leaves as we walked. After the leaves were gone, municipal emplyees cut off all the branches which had carried the leaves, leaving only the big branches, ending in stumps. In the spring new branches grew again from the stumps. This was a way of making sure that the trees all had the same height (and probably did not interfere with electric wires, etc overhead), but left to themselves the trees grow quite big. I live in Canada but I saw a magnificent specimen of this tree in the garden of friends who recently bought a house but did not know what this beautiful tree was.
Did your summer holidays continue until October, m-l? I feel cheated.
Widespread.
Our summer holidays were from July 14 to September 31st. School in July was slow and fun: too hot for regular class, so we were taken for walks in the countryside, or by bus for class trips to interesting places, or we played games, etc. Nowadays the French school year starts earlier in September and ends by the end of June, which comes to the same thing. But kids also have shorter vacations during the year (and the ministry of education never seems to make up its mind – things seem to change from year to year).
About your beautiful red-topped tree, it is hard to see from a distance (even if blowing up the picture), but the leaves look much too big for an ash tree (there are three in my backyard, so I know them well: they have composite leaves, usually about seven small leaves per total “leaf”). Also, their leaves are not a very dark green. A maple does seem more likely (only sugar maples get red in Canada, so yours might be an import, or just a Norwegian variety or even a mutant).
There is something called a Norway maple. It is beautiful, especially when brightly colored in the fall, but around here it is considered a pest: it competes unfairly with native plants.
A pest — sort of like the Norway rat, huh? But see my update, above.
Yes, that‘s the one. I wasn’t going to mention the rat analogy, but I thought of it. I don’t know why Norway should have its good name associated with either of these pests, since the “Norway maple” is a really a citizen of a united Europe (see the map at the wiki link above) and the “Norway rat” lives everywhere.
We had a Norway maple in the back yard of our previous house. It was magnificent to look at in every way, except for the fact that no grass or anything else would grow under it.
It’s the same with the eucalyptus.
If you have a big tree with nothing growing under it, you can set up a chair or two in the empty space, or even a table, and enjoy the shady spot that way. (I think this happens with a number of large tree species: the woods where they grow are easy to walk in as a result). My friends who have the huge horse-chestnut tree are planning to build a deck in a semi-circle around it (the tree is in a corner, next to a fence, so it can’t be a complete circle).
Eucalyptus is a lovely tree. I wish they grew here.
I’ve been thinking of building a bench to encircle a tree for some years, but I never actually get it done.
>A. J. P. Krown
The rattlesnake is lovely too but…
I’m not afraid of being bitten by a eucalyptus, though.
>A. J. P. Crown (C, not K; I’m sorry)
I confess (LOL): In September 1979 my father and I planted 20 eucalyptus as an experiment. My father was who criticized them and though me about the acidity, the enormous needs of water, etc.
Well, what happened? Planted in 1979 — are they enormous now?
Although the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime, I only saw them from a distance and I think there are only 3 or 4, but enormous.
Well, I’m glad you planted them. They’re beautiful.
“Eucalyptus is a lovely tree.” I agree: I thought that the gum trees in South Australia were quite wonderful. In Queensland, much less so.
“I wish they grew here.” None? Not even varieties from Tasmania or the Australian Alps?
Our lovely Norway maple had a circular wooden bench around it, but we never made a lot of use of that bench.
Eucalyptus brings three things to mind: (1) Koalas eat their barely digestible leaves. (2) The nuts or seedpods, with their 4-fold or 5-fold rotational symmetry, are very appealing to me. (3) I read or heard somewhere that they were brought to the west coast of America for timber purposes — shipbuilding? — but disappointingly never grew as straight as they had on their far away Pacific islands.
and (4) they smell good.
we never made a lot of use of that bench.
No, a convex shape isn’t very social.
(4) they smell good.
Although I have heard it said of the ones in San Francisco that they smell like cat pee, I never felt that myself.
I’ve never been to South Australia, but I liked the ones in Queensland. I never saw a koala in Australia, I think I heard that they only like leaves from a certain sort of gum tree that isn’t found everywhere.
In California there are lots of eucalyptus trees. They are indeed beautiful and sweet-smelling, but they are now threatening native vegetation. It is strange to see eucalyptus forests even high in the hills.
[…] on 10 September last year, the one that marks for me the beginning of autumn. I think we decided then that it’s a spisslønn, Acer platanoides. the Norway maple, not to be confused with Acer […]