Background Color :
Buff |Pale Violet |Light Blue | Medium Teal |Original Color
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Background Color :
Buff |Pale Violet |Light Blue | Medium Teal |Original Color
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lanterns
The thorough warmth begins to cool in the Autumn rain. In
the gardens, lawns are now a brilliant emerald, offsetting the splendorous array of coloured flowers.
Especially as the Chrysanthemums unfold into huge mounds and sprays of hundreds of blooms, the papery orange fruit I know as Japanese Lanterns take on their fiery brilliance in an almost red-orange to lemon yellow.
It is a rare gift, but one day some friend of yours will zip over with a huge bunch of those beautiful paper lanterns in their arms. The leaves are somewhat wet and nondescript, but, stripping the stems of the plant will leave long, two to three foot stems holding six or so dangling, delicate "lanterns".
Inside each of these is a shining orange "cherry", a fruit that we children used to savour in the brown-oak, foggy Fall of Great Britain.
Their fruit is rather like the Ground Cherry, or "Jerusalem Cherry" which grows all over the
Laurentians hills in Quebec, Canada.
As kids we used to pick those, too, though the "tomato" from within the papery folds of the Chinese Lantern (Physalis alkegengi) is a mite more tangy from perhaps Vitamin C than the Persimmon- tone of the Jerusalem Cherry.
My exquisite paper lanterns lasted for several months,brightening the October to December household and providing splashes of orange detail to wreathes that I put together the next year.
After the sticks seemed somewhat dusty, I took some of the well-preserved lanterns and carefully saved them in a dry box. Carefully adding the "blooms" to other dried flowers and rusty silk Chrysanthemums ceratainly sparked the fruitful effect that I wanted in my Autumn wreathes. I also stood some of the taller stems
next to my scarecrow outdoors. Every year our town has a scarecrow
contest, and many householders join in to cheer the children as October chills.
LINK HERE TO PHOTOS OF THIS YEARS LANTERNS
| A | t any time, a
lantern is a symbol of light and freedom. |
| P | hysalis is a
native of Central and South-East Europe and Western Asia to
Japan, although it grows very well in North America. |
I |
look forward to my first papery beauties and to a fine stand of them in the future. Chinese Lanterns also propagate by division. |
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