Maroon new leaves, vivid green grass
I am struck by how many first leaves are some shade of red or maroon. I would have thought it an obvious thing that new leaves are green. Many, such as weeping willow, are. A lot of others, at least many of the ones emerging now, are reddish. Driving down the highway a couple weeks ago, I was struck by how many trees were surrounded by what looked like a red cloud. In a way, the scene was almost like late fall, bare branches with red interspersed, except for the size of the leaves. The collective maroonishness of many early spring leaves is a wine-colored haze, poured from trees too long corked.
If I think about it, red foliage isn’t as unusual as it at first sounds. Even in my own garden red leaf lettuce nobly represents this family. Another red leaved plant, the red-tipped photinia I first encountered living in North Carolina many years ago. All its new foliage is red, which gradually turns green with age.
Red all year but even more in spring
