October in the Garden 2025

Sorbus splendens Mountain Ashes

Autumn colour is mostly unreliable in the Botanical Garden, so I don’t often make a point of it, but at this time there are always tree fruits of many kinds, and looking back, I see that it is my habit to focus on them for the October blog. I suppose that mention of tree fruits conjures visions of apples, pears, plums, peaches, and cherries—all common edible tree fruits—but what I mean is any tree that produces a fruit. Botanically, these fruits come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees of fleshiness. Some are dry capsules or nuts, and some are fleshy with tiny seeds or tooth-cracking stones. An acorn is a fruit (a nut), as is an apple (a pome), but so is the lumpy, red, club-like structure produced by some magnolias (a follicetum), and the familiar paired, winged structures produced by maples (a schizocarp of two samaras). A working definition of a fruit is a normally seed-containing ovary, together with any surrounding accessory structures.  

This appears to be a banner year for fruit development, despite the often ready earlier complaints about a seeming absence of pollinators and our overly cool spring weather. Apparently we were mistaken about the pollinators. Apples and crabapples, for example, are impressively fruitful this year. Although birds are always on the prowl for them—at least once they have ripened—the tiny purpling pomes of our native Pacific crab, Malus fusca, are unusually abundant (look for them from the path at the top of the Garry Oak Meadow Garden). The Chinese Malus prattii (Pratt’s crabapple) and Malus yunnanensis (Yunnan crabapple) are similarly bedecked with pomes. Malus prattii has apricot-coloured, lozenge-shaped pomes and is located in the David C. Lam Asian Garden where Siebold Trail meets Stearn Trail. The Yunnan crabapple, which has larger, pale, red-burnished miniature-apple-like pomes, can be found in several places in the Asian Garden, including at the southeast end of Wharton Glade. This is, of course, the appropriate juncture at which to mention UBC Botanical Garden’s 34th Annual Apple Festival, which takes place on October 18 and 19.   

As noted in last month’s blog, pome-fruited plants other than apples are common in the Botanical Garden. Sorbus species—the mountain ashes—which are often very good for colourful fruits, are also having a good year. The pomes of Sorbus splendens (Maries Trail at Farges Trail), a magnificent mountain ash species from Yunnan, China, are now, finally, a brilliant scarlet, but will be thieved in short order by hungry birds. The Asian whitebeams, too, are starting to show themselves. Hemsley’s Asian whitebeam, Micromeles hemsleyi, a species rated handsome for its large, silver-backed leaves, is also known for its russeted yellow pomes. One of the largest species in the genus, our specimen on Maries Trail near Staunton Trail—now close to 15 m tall—is exuberantly covered with fruit. 

The Food Garden, not surprisingly, has a few more pome-fruited trees, not least the showy European quince, Cydonia oblonga, whose large, down-covered, golden fruits ripen in early October. The pomes are not eaten raw, but are used in the making of preserves because of their exceptionally high pectin content. A little later to ripen is the European medlar, Mespilus germanica. You may need to look twice to find the dark brown medlar fruits amongst the turning leaves, but once located, they are worth some study. To become edible, the medlar pome must first be “bletted” (exposed to freezing temperatures). Bletting allows cold-temperature enzymes within the fruit to soften the flesh and convert the starch to sugar. Long considered a genus in its own right on account of its peculiar-looking pomes, botanists using the latest molecular genetic methods have determined that medlars fit comfortably in the hawthorn genus Crataegus. The species will thenceforth be known as Crataegus germanica.  

Another tree fruit in the Food Garden worthy of mention is the Asian persimmon, Diospyros kaki. The brilliant orange fruits of this species are not pomes, but technically, berries. They continue to ripen though autumn, slowly changing from green through creamsicle-coloured and eventually, to a startling racing-car (“international”) orange by mid-November. The less well-known Diospyros lotus (lotus tree) has blueberry-sized, mauve-black fruits covered with a waxy bloom. A youngish grove of these trees is located at the northwest end of the Roseline Sturdy Amphitheatre plantings. Note that there are separate male and female (fruit-bearing) plants. Our oldest tree (planted around 1978), which is next to the pond at the Asian Garden entrance, is a male.   

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. Admittedly more large shrubs than trees, there are fine stands of these along Lower Asian Way opposite Decaisne Trail and by the upper bridge in Meyer Glade. Over the summer, bunches of fat, finger-sized, squishy, pod-like fruits (technically, fleshy follicles) 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 an edible, gooey pulp. Perfect for impressing Halloween visitors. Boo!