This sourwood was at peak fall color about three weeks ago with candy pinks and peaches on the ground...
and some redder leaves still on the tree.
Oxydendrum arboreum, a member of the Heath family, gets both its common and its scientific name from the sour taste of its leaves.
Sourwood bark has deep irregular fissures and is gray with reddish tints in the crevices.
The ovate leaves are about five inches long.
The fruit, in woody capsules, stays on the tree throughout the fall.
Here are two photos of another sourwood from late summer. There are still a few blooms on each raceme. The flowers are reminiscent of lily-of-the-valley.
All the leaves are green, but the flowers give hints of white just as the fruit does in the fall.
Mountain laurel is a broadleaf evergreen native to the eastern United States. It gets part of its scientific name, Kalmia latifolia, from Pehr Kalm, a Finnish botanist who sent plant samples to Linnaeus in the mid-eighteenth century. The flowers are grouped in corymbs of a few dozen.
The ten stamens of each flower are pressed into the five conjoined petals, puckering them into a sort of decagonal bowl.
Mountain laurel is in the Heath family, along with rhododendron and azalea.
This sourwood was at peak fall color about three weeks ago with candy pinks and peaches on the ground...
and some redder leaves still on the tree.
Oxydendrum arboreum, a member of the Heath family, gets both its common and its scientific name from the sour taste of its leaves.
Sourwood bark has deep irregular fissures and is gray with reddish tints in the crevices.
The ovate leaves are about five inches long.
The fruit, in woody capsules, stays on the tree throughout the fall.
Here are two photos of another sourwood from late summer. There are still a few blooms on each raceme. The flowers are reminiscent of lily-of-the-valley. 
All the leaves are green, but the flowers give hints of white just as the fruit does in the fall.
