The importance of being red

Hooray for anthocyanin. Where would we be without it? It has long been my favourite water-soluble, vacuolar, glucosidic pigment, and I feel that this autumn has justified my preference. True, chlorophyll is more important until then, being essential for photosynthesis, so we should all be in dead trouble without it; and the carotenoids, carotene and xanthophyll, are often more obvious to us, because of the delicious golden yellow to which many native shrubs — field maple, elm suckers, and blackthorn — turn in autumn. However, even at that time of year, anthocyanin just gets my vote, because it produces the most beautiful of crimson-lake and purple tints in aging leaves. My paperbark maple, Acer griseum (see picture), was remarkable for the depth and warmth of its leaf colour — until the gales in the second weekend in November stripped it almost bare, that is.