Ruud Kleinpaste: Spectacular plants in autumn

Do you want something to think about? Something that sets fire to your garden? 

Go and visit your local Botanic Gardens, they’re everywhere in Aotearoa! 

I know… we are really lucky in Christchurch. 

Best Autumn performers: liquidamber, smoke bush, Japanese Maple, ash, sycamore, poplar, birch and even some willows. 

To me, all these autumn colours remind me that our planet has been on the re-using bandwagon for 3.8 billion years,and the display is absolutely dazzling! 

This is the time for Dahlia flowers. 

Dahlia Joal Jay Jay. Photo / Supplied 

Julie’s pick of the bunch – it just about hurts your retina! 

Talking about bright colours: a Yellow Ginko biloba (the maidenhair fern tree); ancient gymnosperm 

When leaves form a carpet, it looks pretty impressive. Oh… use male trees only as females smell!!! 

Here’s a great native; always providing colour, so needed in winter too. 

Pseudowintera colorata – pepper plant 

Sequoiadendron giganteum, the giant redwood from the USA. Yes you’ll need to wait a few weeks for it to grow massively, but you’ve got to think “long-term” in this game. The bark is lovely and soft. 

This particular one (in Christchurch botanic gardens) has been host (for many, many years) to one of our most rottenest pest weed in the garden: Poison Ivy!! 

But have a look how stunning this turned out to be… as long as someone takes the time to control that ivy! 

And then, for folk with a decent-sized and shallow water feature (a lake or “lakelet”) this caught my eye a long time ago when visiting the Okefenokee swamp (on the border of Georgia and Florida) 

A Taxodium distichum (Swamp Cypress) can live in water and has pretty knobbly knees or pneumatophores that allow the roots to breathe air above the level of the water. 

 

These swamp cypresses also take a long time to age, but their Pneumatophores will show quite quickly when the tree(s) start to settle 

One word or warning: don’t fall over them, keep an eye on where they are, otherwise you’ll end up pretty wet. 

Sometimes you encounter a tree that you’d never expect in Aotearoa: 

The Wollemi Pine! (Wollemia nobilis) 

This Conifer species belongs to the Araucaria Family of trees (Araucariaceae) and was considered extinct in Australia some 2 million years ago. 

It was re-discovered in 1994 in a canyon NW of Sydney. Fewer than 100 mature specimens still exist and propagation and planting of new trees in suitable habitat is aiming to save this species from extinction. 

Your Botanic Gardens are involved in exactly this kind of restoration of endangered species! 

And collaboration is the key to these projects – even gardeners can be involved! 

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