The color story in Colorado doesn’t end with the dazzling aspen forests, though we do tend to appreciate them to the exclusion of all the other trees, shrubs, herbs, grasses and flowers.
It’s the smaller plants and trees that give depth to the fall palette.
Scrub oak, a scraggly summer green that seems only to promise nutty fall feed for bears, turns into a red showstopper. Likewise, wild plum, chokecherry and serviceberry step up first with fruit then follow on with drifts of orange, red and yellow foliage.
Mountain ash is lovely enough in spring, with smooth mahogany bark and pale yellow blossoms, but blazes with ferny sunset foliage and clusters of bright orange berries in fall.
And don’t even get Boulder plant ecologist Lynn Riedel talking about on the stands of smooth sumac along the South Mesa Trailhead. “They turn bright red and are every bit as showy as the Eastern reds,” she insists.
Wild roses that stunned in summer with fragrant pale pink blossoms finish the season with coppery foliage and red hips. Rabbit brush cuts a powerful pale green silhouette during the hot months and but really turns on the charm in the canyonlands of southern Colorado with bright yellow flowers in fall.
Even drab sage puts out a little extra autumnal effort in plumes of blue-green flowers.
Apache Plume, a ho-hum vine in summer, winds up its season with feathery white seed heads. Brushy willows turn from pale green to pale yellow on mauve stems.
Western dogwood drops the green backdrop and leaves behind red and yellow stems.
“If you hit it just right,” Riedel says of these bit players in the fall show, “ohhh, it’s beautiful.”
