Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

TELEVISION national news told us this was the best year for autumn colours for a very long time. True. A year is a very long time you may say.

Few people will recall the wonderful autumn colours last year or any other year. Even so, I wonder to myself every year which trees give the best colours of all.

Are they the big beeches on the top of Goodwood's horse racing hill? They can be. Get the sunset from a clear-blue sky during a week of cool, even frosty, weather, and they appear to be on fire.

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I always get the feeling that this is the last of summer going up in flames: a wonderful sight. Or are the best colours of all on the whitebeams? Their round leaves are yellow on one side, white on the other. When they fall there lies a 'chessboard' of lemon and silver. That is a memory that will last till next year.

Sometimes the red oaks planted by the late Edward James who owned the West Dean Estate and loved unusual trees claim the prize.

But you have to see these tall specimens already competing with 200-year-old native oaks after a mere 30 years, at that one moment when the human-hand-shaped leaves with their glowing orange colour have a slanting sun on them to return the colour back into your eye.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette December 10