#mapleleaf viburnum

A dousing of weekend rain illuminates the moss in the old growth hemlock forest along Little Laurel Run in Coopers Rock State Forest. The gifts of late May in Central Appalachia's old woods include false Solomon's seal (Maianthemum racemosum), Indian cucumber (Medeola virginiana), speckled wood lily (Clintonia umbellulata), and mapleleaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium).

Mapleleaf viburnum. October 2024.

Callahan State Park, Marlborough, Massachusetts.

No Photoshop here - the leaves on this mapleleaf viburnum (Vibernum acerifolium, family Adoxaceae) really were this pale pink color this fall. Usually they’re a darker red, more like the eponymous maples that they resemble.

Walk with me: The restoration of an Appalachian wilderness. Quebec Run Wild Area is sacred ground. Before the white settlers arrived, Native American tribes stalked these steep hills and cool hollows, riddled by tangled thickets of rhododendron and laurel, in search of game and honor. In the mid-1700's, England and France vied for domination of these gentle mountains, the last barriers to the Ohio River Valley and the fur trade to the west. A few miles to the north of here, an ambush at Jumonville Glen set off the French and Indian War, and more broadly, the Seven Years' War. England and its Colonial allies prevailed and the settlers soon arrived to stake their claims, followed by the iron and glass industries, the railroads, and a devastating onslaught of clearcutting and fires. Nothing was left standing. The soil itself was burned away in the heat of the fires. With no trees or soil to absorb rain, catastrophic flooding ensued. Not far to the north, Johnstown, Pennsylvania was nearly wiped off the map by a terrible flood in 1889. As the sobering consequences of insatiable industrialization settled in, priorities began to change in the early 20th Century. In the 1920s and 1930's, the U.S. Forest Service and state agencies began buying up large tracts of devastated land with the goal of reforesting the mountains and reducing flooding. What you see here is a legacy of that effort, a third-growth forest that has been given a reprieve and a new lease on life. This magnificent tract on the eastern flank of Chestnut Ridge is now forever protected as a designated wild area of the Forbes State Forest system and serves to remind us that good can come after bad, when we are willing to learn from our mistakes.

Autumn on Snake Hill.

Elevation makes a huge difference in the Central Appalachians. Canaan Valley was at peak color almost two weeks ago. A thousand feet lower, at Snake Hill Wildlife Management Area, the leaves are just starting to approach peak. From top: red maple leaves drape fan clubmoss; the white-glazed, blue-purple berries of common greenbrier, an important food source for wildlife in the fall and winter; oldfield aster, also known as frost aster; milkweed pods release their precious seed; goldenrod gone to seed; the blue-black berries of mapleleaf viburnum, whose blushing red leaves are one of autumn's great joys; the brilliant yellow foliage of wild yam; the fiery red bolts of sourwood's dying flame; red oak burning away at the trail's edge; eastern teaberry loaded up with its distinctive red berries; a gorgeous Maryland golden-aster, one of the last beauties standing before the frost; and a spotted cucumber beetle, which despite its innocent appearance is a bane of late season gardens.