Each fall, I usually get one or two phone calls concerning the autumn foliage, the callers wondering, invariably, if this season’s coloration will be better (or worse) than last fall. It’s a good question, but one that is basically impossible to answer, of course. There is no way of measuring beauty. That’s my normal response. And even in a drought period, you never know exactly how the resultant fall foliage may be affected. For instance, last week I was driving around between Mars Hill and Johnson City, Tennessee. I had heard that the leaves wouldn’t be looking so great, due to the drought, but I had to think otherwise: the hillsides were incredibly colorful, the trees putting on a dazzling fall display. This week’s Mystery plant is one of the chief contributors to whatever fall foliage color we do have. It’s a common species, related to the tupelo of Southern swamps, but this species grows on upland sites. It occurs in a variety of high-ground sites from New England to the upper Midwest, and south to Florida and Texas. It is potentially a large tree, up to 100 feet tall or so, producing gray, rough bark, which is checkered like alligator skin on big individuals, and thus it is similar to persimmon. The branches tend to come straight out of the trunk, at a 90-degree angle. Branches and twigs are generally smooth and gray, or sometimes reddish. The leaves are rather standard and boring, smooth and shiny, and shaped like footballs, with a slightly pointed tip (also like persimmon). As a beginning botany student, this was one of the hardest trees for me to recognize, however: Nothing about it seemed particular characteristic, certainly not the foliage. (Another good clue for identifying this tree comes from a look at the leaf scar: There will be three equally sized vascular bundle scars, appearing like dots in a row. Persimmon has a single crescent-like vascular bundle scar inside the leaf scar, looking like a smile.) Summer-time flowers, male and female, are produced on the same tree. The flowers are small and yellowish: Male flowers are in clusters, while female flowers occur at the ends of small stalks, usually one or two, sometimes three, at a time. The fruits mature in the fall, as the foliage changes color. Each fruit is a fleshy drupe, containing a single ridged seed. The fruits are an attractive gun-metal blue and wildly popular with a lot of the birds. But it is the foliage that really makes the tree a standout. The leaves turn color relatively early in the autumn. At first, a given tree will bear a mixture of both green and red leaves, and as fall progresses, there is more and more red. The red is in fact a brilliant scarlet, making this tree one of the most colorful in the forests. For growing in your yard, this one is really nice, a native tree giving a combination of shade, food for the birds and unbeatable fall color. (Photo by Stacey Jensen.)

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John Nelson is the curator of the Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, in the department of biological sciences. As a public service, the herbarium offers free plant identifications. For more information, visit www.herbarium.org or call 803-777-8196.