Which?
Which tree is the king in the royal family of autumn colours? Which tree knows how to senesce with the greatest majesty? Which tree launches the arboreal colorimeter into space and sends it spinning in chaos to distant galaxies of gasping radiance?
The Birch tosses its golden traces seductively in the rising breeze against the deep blue sky. The Rowan drips with sanguine red, lacerated by its own serrations. The Horse Chestnut canters to carpet the earth with its spread-fingered hands polka-dotted with silky auburn conkers. The Beech glints with beaten copper and yellow gilt. The Maple blushes with patterned pink symmetry. The Aspen flickers with vibrant yellow restlessness. The Larch waves delicate orange fronds as it caresses the air in tremulous insouciance.
Winter comes, the scouring gales excoriate ephemeral glory to the last lignified bone of flailing fingers -
But wait, the Holly is hunched, adamantine against the drifting snow, a dark green Stoic, blooded here and there with self inflicted wounds but unmoved, unbowed, defiant, the captain of its soul.