When I lived in New England, we made autumn excursions to the orange and red hills

of Vermont and New Hampshire. On the west coast, we get lost in corn mazes. Cooler temperatures mean that it's no longer summer, but the season still beckons us outside with fields of fiery-colored abundance. And in Japan, October is no different. Just outside Tokyo is a flower park that blooms bright in autumn. The hills are covered with Kochia scoparia (syn. Bassia scoparia), a Eurasian native annual shrub whose vernacular names are, appropriately, Mexican firebrush, fireball, or burningbush. Kochia leaves and stems turn from green to bright red in October