Everybody has their own favourite autumn colour. Some love blood-red maples. I love golden ginkgos. Others love lemony hazels. Some trees, such as silver maples (Acer saccharinum), seem to display all the colours at once. And then there’s dark, bronzed purple, not the flashiest colour but still wonderfully striking. Sometimes it comes out of a green leaf, and sometimes out of a leaf that was purple all summer.
You see it in the narrow-leaved ash Fraxinus angustifolia ‘Raywood’, a compact tree, narrow in youth but spreading to medium size, an excellent chocolate purple coming from summer green. Fortunately it’s resistant to the dreaded ash dieback. You have probably seen it as a street tree.
By contrast Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’ is a popular, summer-purple big
