The Maidenhair Tree (Ginkgo biloba) is sometimes described as a "living fossil". As I said in an entry last December: "All other plants in the world are members of groupings of related plants but Ginkgo has a unique taxonomy being the only member of its division, class, genus, order and family of which it is the only species. In prehistory there were other Ginkgos but they are gone. The Maidenhair Tree was here with the dinosaurs (and probably eaten by them)."
 There is a large one at the South London Botanical Institute which has shed its golden leaves and I passed an hour or so last week sweeping them off the tarmac driveway and carting them onto the compost heap. I made the point in my last entry that leaves are best in their own pile to make leafmould (by fungal action) and in fact a mass of leaves is likely to overwhelm the bacterial action of a regular compost heap.
 However, one of the gardeners at the SLBI gave me a good tip regarding Ginkgo (thanks Cath). She noted that Ginkgo leaves break down much quicker than other leaves so are ok in general composting. Most trees have net-like patterns of veins in their leaves but Ginkgo has leaves with parallel veins- presumably a characteristic of its ancient origins. These "primitive" leaves decompose more rapidly.

 The large Sycamore at the back of the garden drops its leaves quite late in the year. The surrounding area is carpeted in golden brown for a week or so, turning soggy brown as the leaves begin to decompose and merge with the soil.
 I rake them up along the path but leave the rest where they are. The raked leaves go in a wire mesh bin to make leafmould.
 

 A separate pile for leaves is preferable to putting them straight onto a compost heap. Leaves break down by fungal action (rather than bacterial) which is a slower process at cooler temperatures. Adding a mass of autumnal leaves to an existing compost heap unbalances the biology at work.

 Tahoe wildflowers. Alpine Lilies (Lilium parvum) were coming into flower towards the end of my 10 day hike on the trails around Lake Tahoe back in July. They're sometimes called the Sierra Tiger Lily.

 A raw November day on the allotment.

 "Right plant, right place" is a mantra among gardeners. Here then is a curious selection for the woodland garden: these appear to be potatoes. Actually they have materialised in the shady back half of the garden by chance. A few discarded potatoes seem to have strayed from a nearby compost heap and taken root.
 I won't seek to harvest them for eating but I'll be interested to see if they continue to grow well and flower. Mysteriously they seem a good deal more vigorous than the crop I had on the allotment last year despite being the wrong plant in the wrong place at the wrong time of year!

 This bushy Fatsia japonica is in the local park not far from the Mahonia I mentioned in my previous entry. F. japonica is another late flowering plant which attracts pollinators even as winter approaches. Numerous wasps were alighting on the flowers as well as many bluebottle flies.

 Cultivars of Mahonia x media flower late in the year. I saw these in the park up the road. I don't detect any particular fragrance off them but bumblebees will come out of hibernation when they get the scent. Despite the chill some big bumblers were coming and going and rummaging hungrily among the flowers.

 The flowers may fade but these Purple Toadflax (Linaria purpurea) are going out in a blaze of colour. In summer spikes of purple flowers top the tall green stems. In autumn the flowers go to seed but the stems turn to fiery shades of red as they wane into winter.  

 It's rather late in the year to be doing any planting but hardy plants that have been grown outdoors (rather than in polytunnels) generally tough it out. I bought these two Hellebore foetidus and a pot of Arum maculatum at a market last week so I'll pop them in the ground.
 It's chilly but we haven't had a frost yet in inner London. In effect the big city has an extended growing season being a microclimate that is generally several degrees warmer then the surrounding region. 

 Call it autumn or call it the fall, both terms evoke the shedding of leaves en masse by deciduous trees, shrubs and perennials. Leaf litter is a wonderful thing, nature's soil improver. I sweep leaves off the grass, paths and patio but straight onto the beds or gather them in a wire mesh bin to make leafmould.
 Gardeners sometimes go to a lot of effort removing organic matter in the form of "garden waste" and a lot of effort adding organic matter in the form of compost. A mature garden can feed itself -just as nature does- in a self-sustaining cycle.

 Tahoe wildflowers. Lupines are probably the most prolific of all the wildflowers I've seen on my hiking trips to California and Oregon, most recently in Lake Tahoe (above). North America has the best part of 200 Lupinus species growing in the wild; California alone has around 80 species.

 Autumn is the mushroom season. Mushrooms and fungus are sometimes used as interchangeable terms but to be accurate mushrooms are the fruiting body of the fungus.

 I went to my local Farmers' Market on Saturday. There is a fruit and veg stall from Kent that I particularly like. Their produce is a bit knobbly, a bit knarly, the skin may be a bit blemished. But it tastes so good.
 In fact it tastes like the fruit is off a tree and the veg has grown in the ground. And if it needs packaging a brown paper bag is provided.

 Walking onto the allotments this afternoon the air was chill but it was gloriously sunny.

 It's that time of year. The leaves are falling, the days are getting shorter, the weather is damp and chilly... winter is coming. If I had a fire I'd put another log on it.

 The miniature landscapes of terrariums and bonsai don't really interest me to be honest. The other day however I was sorting through some neglected pots on the patio. The community of tiny plants that have established themselves in this one do indeed evoke a world within a world.

 Tahoe wildflowers. Still sifting through the many wildflowers I photographed during my trip to Tahoe in July. These Asters grew all along a section of the trail through the Meiss Meadows.
 I'm calling them Asters but the hundreds of North American species of Aster bar one have been reclassified as different species (though they are still grouped as members of Asteraceae family). I don't know what these were when they were Asters and I don't know what they are now they're something else. So I'll stick with what is still their common name: Asters.

 The pods of Iris foetidissima are starting to pop now with clusters of bright orange seeds. Native to the UK, it's sometimes called the Stinking Iris or the Gladwyn Iris among other names. Its toughness makes it useful to the gardener; I planted it in a couple of areas of dry shade though it will cope with sun or shade, dry or damp conditions.
 The berry-like seeds gleam through winter, in fact are more eye catching than the pale flowers in summer.

 I was given several Foxgloves grown from seed by one of my neighbours. I've re-potted them into larger pots twice now as the root ball progressively increases in size. As this photo shows pot grown plants frequently become potbound (i.e. the roots form a dense fibrous mass shaped to the confines of the pot).
 It's worth potting on if this happens because the plant is using up all the nutrition it can find thereby restricting its growth. When the time comes to put a potbound specimen into the ground it's advisable to tease out the roots somewhat to encourage them to spread outwards in the surrounding earth. 

 There are still some beautiful blooms to be seen even though winter is approaching. I saw this magnificent Mahonia lomarifolia yesterday at the South London Botanical Institute. Winter flowers in an English garden are invariably a plant of distant origins as is the case here; China and Myanmar are the natural habitat of this species.
 Mahonia is much used by gardeners and the Mahonia x media hybrids are widely available. They look rather similar to the one above which is not surprising because they are a cultivated cross between M. lomarifolia and M. japonica. They're fine but the straight species is particularly striking and architectural and not often grown in the UK.