Red vine along Whycocomagh Road

From the look-off above the Mull River on Highway 252, I made my way to the Old Mull River Road, where I found some dandy reds and even managed to capture a few of them in full sunlight! Patches of blue sky are even showing in some of the photos, though getting the photos in proper light put all the patience I had to the test, as the sun would disappear almost as soon as I stopped each time before a beautiful tree and took its own sweet time in reäppearing. Still, I did get some good photos, so I was really giving thanks!

The Old Mull River Road runs into the Whycocomagh Road at its southwestern end; I turned left, drove down the Whycocomagh Road to and through Glencoe Mills and beyond as slowly as I could, admiring the changing colours and always keeping in mind my need to be at the Cape Breton Fiddlers’s Association concert at the Gaelic College in St Anns at 14h. The eastern end of the Whycocomagh Road is bordered by guard rails above the Indian River and is invariably one of the places with the finest fall colours in Cape Breton. As the photos I took there show, the colours, even under the sun, were still not at their peak—there are lots of greens mixed in with the yellows and few of the brilliant reds and oranges that would later arrive (bereft, alas, of sun!). While I was taking these photos, my eyes were drawn to the brilliant red vine lying along the side of the road and climbing in the adjacent bushes, as seen in photo #1. A friend of mine who is very knowledgeable about plants and flowers—she has an astounding array of flower gardens every year at her home—identified the vine as a wild variety of Virginia creeper, also known as woodbine; its Latin designation, Parthenocissus quinquefolia, was chosen to reflect its common name, as described here (more descriptions of this member of the grape family can be found here, with the photos under “Autumn Foliage” and “Fruit” quite close to those in the detail shown in photo #2). This lovely vine’s deep red hues, even in the shade, were brighter than any I saw in the sun on the nearby hillsides this day.