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Autumn Colors

© Gregg Pasterick

Autumn is upon us. Sigh.

For me, the beginning of autumn has always been a mixed blessing. Ohio summers were always so busy with gardening and meteor showers and camping and chasing butterflies, autumn came as a relief. All that gardening wound down, or moved indoors as we dried, blanched, froze, canned and did whatever else we could think of with all the flowers, herbs, fruits, seeds, and vegetables. The big meteor showers came and went. Warblers, so colorful in their breeding plumage the previous May, migrated through, disheveled and in tatters in their off-season feathers. Monarch butterflies paraded past, on their way to Mexico. The heat and humidity abated. Shadows lengthened and the days grew shorter. And that, those long shadows and shorter days, were where the blessing got mixed. It meant that winter was approaching. The world outside would die; temperatures would plummet; snow would fall; utility bills would rise.

Autumn was a mixed blessing, but it did what it could - and does what it can - to ease the descent into a winter of cold and dark. Autumn takes us there on a magic carpet of color, and what it might lack in wildflowers, it makes up for in leafy foliage; trees explode, a super nova of red and orange and golden yellow.

Of course there are still wildflowers; the asters and goldenrods and ironweeds and so on. Common Sunflowers (Helianthus annus), a wildflower more aptly named than any other perhaps, which can be found in bloom at almost any given time of the year somewhere in North America, blooms well into the autumn in Ohio. Acres and acres of it might be found, casting longs shadows of their own across the autumnal landscape.

The wash of color differs, of course, as you head further south, or west, across into the desert or along the coast or up into the mountains; any mountains. While trees "back east" burst into all the hot colors imaginable, golden yellow Aspens dominate many locations "out west." As for wildflowers, one immediately comes to mind; California Fuchsia.

California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum) is a bright red trumpet-shaped flower not only providing us a beautiful fall color, but thriving in the unfriendly confines of dry habitats. Also known as Hummingbird Trumpet and California Fire Chalice (that's a descriptive name), it is a member of the Evening Primrose Family (Onagraceae), and is related to the ornamental fuchsias of our gardens and hanging baskets.