Thank you. It's helpful. Perhaps I did not ask the right question for the first time. What I was trying to ask was if any of the shrubs (except the Amsonia, which I learned now is not a shrub at all. We will eliminate it. Since burning bush is invasive, we eliminate it too) I mentioned above are deciduous shrubs that behave like Forsythia flowering in winter when leafless? So...... they are not just gray stumps and branches in winter time but actually bearing something.

Some purple foliaged shrubs to check out in addition to the others suggested (which may or may not fit your tastes and needs or shade requirements - I'll let you research that): - Physocarpus/ninebark Summer Wine - I have Coppertina which is more of a orange, but I like the form, the flowers and the color. - purple leafed sand cherry - several of the Weigelas, such as Wine and Roses, Spilled Wine or Midnight wine. -contorted red hazel, Corylus avellana 'Red Majestic' - heather/Calluna vulgaris 'Hoyerhagen' and 'Multicolor' have an orangey-red foliage in summer and more a true red in winter. They may not be the right shade for you, but most of MA is well-suited to grow heather. -there are several small trees like some of the Japanese maples, crabapples and plums with purple leaves that don't get much bigger than good-sized shrubs some plants have deep red red or purple foliage in certain seasons: - PJM rhododendron is mahogany red in winter and dark green with reddish overtones in summer - Several heather/Calluna have reddish growing tips or are reddish foliaged in winter - Blueberries, many viburnums, and Enkianthus are red to dark red in the fall. Other thoughts would be to have some of the larger perennials with dark red foliage such as Cimicifuga Brunette (very happy in shade), Clematis recta purpurea or one of its darker selections. If backed with one of the shrubs that is purple in winter, you would have your dark purple presence year round.

Japanese maples come up in gardens here but seldom in the woods, as our summers are dry. Any kind of tree with orange or red fall color may be yellow in full shade. Silver maples here often have a mix of colors that can be quite nice, streaks or sections of purple, red, maybe orange and yellow. Green Norway maples growing in the open here often have quite a bit of orange and red on the outside; there is a grafted cultivar seen in plantings here that is consistently all yellow in fall. A larger solitary Norway maple in a northwest WA community actually blazes in fall. A friend who grew up in Illinois said there was a Norway maple and a sugar maple nearby, these behaved as though trading off which one was conspicuous in a given fall. Recently volunteers have started clearing Norway maple saplings out of a wooded ravine in a Seattle park. The numbers of these that were becoming established was positively frightening. Elsewhere here it is not usual in my experience to see such intense infestation - so far. I do know of a drier evergreen forest park site north of Seattle where too many have been coming up, but nothing like in the one moister, probably more fertile location. During one segment in a fictional cop TV show I've watched the detectives go out to a local wooded site to look at a crime scene. It was during a time when the trees where not in leaf, as far as I could see just about every tree, small and larger was a Norway maple.

You know all those spectacular tropicals y'all grow in pots? Elephant Ears are an absolute plague here in the Deep South. I paid eight whole dollars for Illustris, and it took five years of extremely dedicated work to get rid of it. I laid the dug out plants on my driveway and let them cook in the (southern) sun so they'd die....everytime it rained, they'd revive. I finally bagged them up and sent them to the dump. Then there are River fern, aka Thelypteris kunthii (free plants...do your homework before planting!), yellow flag iris (the seeds are viable forever, but the seedlings are easy to pull young. good thing.), Goldsturm rudbeckia (yes, they seed for years after the plants are gone), and OBEDIENT plant (ha!). Here's one that I am keeping a watchful eye on: Puple Loropetalum. If you damage a root while working in your bed, you get a sucker immediately. Man, I hope these aren't going to be problematic. They're my favorite purple foliage plants for our area.