What colour is Autumn? (Thursday morning Coombe Wood walk)

What colour is Autumn? Orange, red and brown? What about yellow, pink, russet, purple, magenta, gold - and green? 

Shadows on the filmy layer on the pond, which has separated in swirls leaving clear patches with perfect reflections.  

Flower beds all planted. That must have been backbreaking work!

There's quite pile of red leaves under this tree and many floating in the little stream.

These leaves seem to be either red or green and there are hardly any that are in between. I wouldn't have noticed that there are berries if I hadn't taken a close up photo.

Vitis and fuchsias in the sunlight. Each vitis leaf beautifully multicoloured

Green acer leaves turning yellow and tinged with pink - in front of very red leaves.

The pink seeds on this acer have turned dark red/brown but the stems are still vibrant pink.

The Golden Rain Tree look yellowy gold from a distance

but looking closer the pods and leaves are a lot more multi-coloured with a metallic tint.

 Mystery plant - spiky barbs lit up in the sunlight. 

Looking across a corner of the prairie bed to the wildflower area, which the gardener has begun to prepare for more seeds.

How different all the acers are. This one is such a vivid red and the seeds are still very red too.

Abutilon flowers - these were much more orange before but have become pinker now - you can still see the orange around the edge of the petals.

Water drop on Abutilon reflecting upside down trees. 

Sweet chestnuts and Autumn leaves in a pool of sunlight. 

Looking closer at the contrasts - spiky green exterior, soft downy interior and glossy nuts with tufty tops - on a bed of pine needles.

Colourful trees. 

I've been looking for fungus but there has been very little so far but this time, among some pine needles, I noticed tiny puffball mushrooms and some white fungus.

A closer look at the fungus - thousands of tiny hairs with little droplets on top. 

Orange and red leaves.

Red and yellow creeping up each leaf.

Sunlight on browns and greens.

Bright red and green. 

Spiders web threads glistening on the teasels. 

Back to the mystery plant - with the remains of the Michaelmas daisies in the background.

A tree behind the sundial is covered in bright red berries 

The shrub on the end of the long hut has clusters of orange berries.

Tiny blue flowers with red leaves. 

A few little flowers remain on this plant - the leftovers provide structure for the spiders threads to be attached to.

Sunlight through tiny pink flowers. 

A lady was picking Love-in-a-mist seed pods and slipping them into a paper carrier bag on her arm. I've never seen such blatant seed collecting happening before - I was wondering if she was going to leave any for me to photograph!

Yes she did. 

I'm sure the vitis leaves are more colourful than usual this year. The leaves that are further up the vine-like stems look paler. But are they? From a distance these look orange - it's only when you get closer that you can really see the detail.

Autumn is such a glorious mixture of unexpected colours. 

Thank you very much for joining me.