While this year’s autumn colours will no doubt be worth admiring, because of the hot, dry summer, most leaves are exhibiting sign of stress, and the show may be somewhat abbreviated. The focus this year should be on fruit, since this will clearly be a banner year. Everything from crabapples, cotoneasters and quinces to sapphire berries (sadly, already picked clean by birds), sparkleberries and sumac bobs are incredibly abundant this year. Some would have us believe such abundance presages an extra cold winter, but it’s more easily explained by the nearly perfect conditions that occurred during and immediately following flowering earlier this year. We have plenty to brag about in Vancouver, but the combination of warm springtime temperatures, sunny conditions and well-spaced rain events is not usually one of them.
At the top of my list sits the colourful, outlandish fruit of the magnolias. Most Magnolia species produce large, pinkish-red fruits, but the big-flowered Asian species produce often spectacularly lumpy, club-like fruits. Like all magnolias the seeds inside these weird fruits are covered in a bright orange, oil-rich skin, and once ripe, they emerge out of the strange brightly coloured flesh, much to the delight of both foraging animals and visitors alike. Another of the Garden’s more unusual fruits is borne by the European bladdernut, Staphylea pinnata. As unappealing as it might sound, this large shrub is exceedingly handsome with its striped stems and elder like leaves that turn rust-red to purple-brown in autumn. Bunches of straw coloured dry, inflated capsules, each one a pair of walnut-sized bladders fused together, contrast wonderfully with the darkening foliage at this time of year. Inside the capsules are a few shiny brown seeds. These are reputed to taste like pistachio nuts when ripe. You can find a large colony of European bladdernuts on the slope on the west side of the Winter Garden. Finally, a perennial favourite among our younger visitors is Decaisnea insignis, popularly known as “dead man’s fingers.” This is a Chinese botanical oddity known for its elegant slender stems topped with a lush crown of tropical-looking, pinnate leaves. There is a fine stand of these along Lower Asian Way opposite Decaisne Trail. Over the summer, bunches of finger-sized, fleshy, pod-like fruits typically develop amongst the leaves at the tips of the branches. The fruits gradually turn an unexpected shade of pale metallic blue, becoming crooked and distended when ripe (hence the common name). They eventually split open to expose watermelon-like seeds embedded in a viscous, edible pulp. Perfect for impressing Halloween visitors. Boo!
Submitted by Douglas Justice, Associate Director, Horticulture & Collections, September 30, 2014.