Patti has been remarking lately on the vibrant foliage of the gooseberry bush in our backyard. It has beautiful hues of orange, yellow, red, and brown leaves. There are still some trees in the area that have abundant and colourful foliage, but many have dropped their leaves already in this Fall season.
Foliage is the aggregate of leaves of one or more plants, often green in Spring and Summer but colourful in Autumn. It can also refer to a cluster of leaves, flowers, or branches in decorative displays. “A wreath of foliage adorned the front door.” A representation of leaves, flowers, or branches for architectural ornamentation on a door frame or monument is also foliage.
Foliage comes from the Middle French word for leaf, foille, which is why it is sometimes spelled foillage. Middle English speakers used the word foil to designate a leaf. Early French used the word fuellage to describe a mass of leaves. All of this is connected to the Latin folium, meaning leaf.
There is some debate on the pronunciation of foliage. The disyllabic pronunciation “foh-lij” is very common. Some insist that foliage requires a trisyllabic pronunciation “foh-lee-ij” because of its spelling. However, words of a similar pattern such as carriage and marriage are not pronounced trisyllabic.
In Pomfret, Vermont, USA, the town has tried to limit tourists arriving to see and photograph the abundant fall foliage (according to a BBC online article). A local road, Howe Hill, winds downhill in a series of gentle curves revealing verdant farm fields with swaths of forest in which the red and orange autumn leaves cling to boughs. Until recently, the number of tourists visiting Pomfret was more trickle than torrent. But ever since images of Sleepy Hollow Farm, a 115-acre private property set on the rustic road, became viral on social media a few years ago, locals say things have gotten out of hand. In early October, more than half of the cars driving through this 900-person town sported out-of-state license plates. One, from Florida, came to an abrupt stop on a road with a 45-mile-per-hour speed limit, blocking one of two lanes. The reason? To take a picture of a farmer's silo against a backdrop of autumn foliage. A quick look on Instagram reveals thousands of images of the farm's winding earthen road lined by stately maple trees lit up in autumnal reds and jack-o-lantern oranges leading toward an elegant 1700s Cape Farmhouse on Cloudland Road. "It's a beautiful spot. It's too bad it's been ruined for everybody," said Deborah Goodwin, the exhibits coordinator at Pomfret's Artistree Community Arts Center. "[For] the past couple years it's been out of control. Tour buses were just dumping ... people out there." Goodwin says social media influencers would regularly climb over a gate plastered with "No Trespassing" signs, set up changing booths to accommodate their many costume swaps, get their "city cars" stuck on the narrow dirt road, and leave bodily waste by the roadside. "It was bad," she recalled. "The residents went to the [local government] and said, 'We can't have this anymore.'" As a result, town officials voted to close the roads leading to the farm during the peak fall foliage season (23 September to 15 October) to non-residents, spurring the ire of travellers who had driven to the area in hopes of capturing a perfectly curated autumn foliage photo.
I have my own apprehensions with foliage around our house. It looks wonderful and provides nice shade in the Spring, Summer, and Fall. It takes quite a bit of work to clean up the dropped foliage on the yard, walkways, and driveway from the needles of the spruce and pine trees and the leaves of ash trees, willows, apple trees. But that is foliage in Saskatchewan.
John would like to know if anyone has a sincere interest in a relevant word that he could possibly research for an upcoming column. If so, please send your requests to [email protected]. Words will be selected according to relevance and research criteria. We cannot confirm that all words will be used.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
