Taisha Mitchell's wonderful write-up for the November 2014 in the Garden - UBC Botanical Garden blog hadn't come out yet when Nadia and I visited the garden on Tuesday, and of all the things Taisha mentioned, I only photographed one: Disanthus cercidifolius. I actually gave up on trying to get these tiny flowers in focus and photographed the leaves, but that's the photo in which I managed to capture the flowers. Having forgotten my real (point and shoot) camera, it's a good thing I was interested in leaves anyway. Enkianthus campanulata won the prize for red. It did pretty well on yellow too - the label on the third photo said the same as for the red one. The Ginkgo biloba won the prize for yellow, looking brilliant even in the fog. The turning leaves of Larix kaempferi 'Blue Dwarf' were pretty showy too. The green prize goes to Camellia japonica 'Kingyo-tsubaki', fish-tail camellia. I've posted this, my favourite camellia, before, but I've never seen it with leaves piggy-backed from the underside of another leaf. Second prize goes to what I think should be Cercis glabra. I don't think we've posted this Ulmus parvifolia 'Seiju', a small plant with such tiny leaves (for an elm). I think Nadia said this is her favourite viburnum - Viburnum parvifolium, so this is for her.
I had a few more favourites from my last garden visit, and they don't fit the flowers theme, so I'll post them here. Taisha did mention sweet gums in her blog - here's a nice Liquidambar styraciflua. The leaves are from a different tree, same species. These leaves are very striking on this Magnolia fraseri, in the Carolinian Garden. These Kalmia latifolia leaves haven't even turned, but they look very striking with the light undersides and yellow stems. The cultivar might be 'Snowdrift' - it would be a lot easier for me to say if I knew the flower colour, but these leaves seem so distinctive and they seem to match what I found for that. Sequeing to fruits now, this is Carpinus caroliniana. And how showy is this Crataegus x grignonensis. I don't think I've ever found the tag, but that's what's supposed to be here, and I've been calling it that for years. And from sublime to well, eye-catching. This Gleditsia japonica is at the end of the parking lot. It has huge (for Gleditsia) leaflets, large enough to be mistaken for Pseudoacacia leaflets, but most leaves are double-compound. The fruits aren't exactly beautiful, but they make an impression even from a distance. Back to sublime - the sky when I was leaving.
