Fall Colors Are Good This Year In Southern Illinois

 This persimmon and sassafras at Dolan Lake were putting on a bright show last week.  The colors have been good all over Southern Illinois, and even though I think we are peaking now, the show will continue for a while, because red maple is just now turning.  Most of the oaks are still green, and there will be a few colorful ones.

 Sassafras (left) and persimmon (right) look good with the sun shining through them...

 ...and the fruit is colorful, too.

The light was wrong on this shot, but it does show the intense red of sumac this year.  Railroad rights-of-way, and fence rows are loaded with red sumacs right now.

 Hickories often go straight to brown, but this year they are showing off.

 This big old persimmon looks good every year, and in the spring it's flowers perfume the air.

Round as a ball, sharp as an awl, that's chestnut.   The shiny brown of these nuts is one of my favorite fall colors, and in a couple of weeks these starchy nuts will sweeten up considerably.  The bur is a triple, which is a bit unusual.  Triples normally have one unfilled nut, but we found two good triples under one tree this year.  Gray squirrels ambush our chestnuts as soon as they drop, and deer like them, too, so we just get the leftovers.