Wisteria for 2010 - Anyone!

So hows your wisteria?

2009 was a great year for mine. It survived the great ice srom, bloomed like crazy and two of mine set pods!

I plan to pick the pods in the near future so they will be up for swapping...D-mail me if you are interested.

Heres mine, time for show and tell!

Two of mine are China Blue and the other is an oldie NOID. There are actually four (two of each on this trellis!) The Noid is a transplant divide from our old farm and is probably some 50 years old. We have to keep them trimmed to look nice on this trellis.

So how are you treating yours? Any problems, any joys? Mine was a shear joy this year and am so looking forward to it in 2010!

They are simply beautiful to say the least. You are lucky that yours survived the ice, mine didn't, but they were only about a foot tall. I had started them from seeds. I haven't had the heart to try them again. So I'll just look at yours.

Noooooooo!

rob, you got a long way to go before you see flowers.. be at least 6-7-8 years until maturity!

RED,whaddaya mean NO?! LOL!

I'll bet bigred has dealt with Wisteria taking off like Kudzu down in Arkansas. It can be terribly invasive, especially in the south. Bigred, am I right?

Aren't there types that aren't invasive?

Some Wisteria info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisteria

From this, it looks like the Chinese Wisteria that is invasive in the eastern US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisteria_sinensis

Looks like the American species would be good to try, but they're not fragrant and have smaller blooms. The Japanese hybrids sound really nice, but it sounds like they're particularly susceptible to spring freezes.

There is an amazing pic of a Wisteria display in Japan on Wikipedia, but I can't get links to work to it.

At my ex's house it went underneath the soffets and was growing wild in the attic. lol

AuntAnne,

Talk about invasive.. That is really an invasion of ones privacy!!! LOL...

Well the vines I have are not invasive. They sport from the root and go up a trellis. They do get rather long so I just cut them back and they stay where they are on the trellis. They have yet to come up from the root like away from the plant.

YOu are probably thinking more of the tree form

Blossombuddy,

It may be that its just not invasive in your zone. I know that it is invasive in my zone of 8b.. My hubby and I have been pulling and digging it up for years to stop if from choking our oaks. It is quite beautiful, and you are very lucky to live in an area where it behaves itself.

Oh, I have seen the tree form here behave very badly! I will not do the trees! Not on my ranch though.

Whats bad here is honeysuckle, poision ivy to name a few.

Oh, its definitely a vine type that's invasive through much of the southeast-I've seen it practically tear a porch off a house. Different story in zone 5 though. From what I've read, even the tree forms are vining plants that are trained or grafted.

Well, to me invasive means taking over an area and preventing other plants such as natives to survive as in choking out an area with its roots. Not with its branches. Going up with the branches yes, it does make it a nuisance, but you do need to do maintenance. If you do not well then you will have its tails going under eaves or up trees and making themelves parasites to the other things or plants around it.....

Just because the wisteria grows and gets heavy on a trellis or crawls up the roof and lays up there taking up space does not make it invasive, it means someone neglected to prune it if itstails are not wwwell wanted where it is.. And if you do not keep after the vine, yes, the thing can get woody.

My plant has been in the same location for a decade and has yet to send a sport up in another area away from the vine. While I admit it will have a misguided branch appear periodically, that is just it, it is a misguided branch and not invasive mongrel.

Now if you if you want invasive, try equisetuim.. (bullrush) It will take over an area and choke EVERYTHING in its path. It is a rhizomatious plant that sends a runner underground and can do so 15-20 or more feet away and then will fill in the blanks bewteen where it started and then klobbering just about everything in its path. Poisone ivy is like that., but it also spreads ny shizome and berries.

I dont see this wisteria doing that. What I see it doing is crawling the trellis, which BTW is extra heavy to support this heavy plant and it loves its trellis. It may send a runner out on the ground and if you do not catch it and turn it up its trellis it will crawl in the ground and take root, but it does not just pop up anywhere. You would still have to sever the root from the plant

Bittersweet is a vine that I would call invasive more so than this one could ever be.It spreads and comes up from runners underground, it drops berries that spread elsewhere and grow or gets spread by bird.

Yes, this wisteria eventually will sport flowers and a bean. So dead head the beans... there will not be too many of them, but if you dont, then expect to have volunteers in the years to come.

I planted ONE on my grannie cabin 2 yrs ago. It's eating my grannie cabin...Noooooooo!

In my zone and in my yard... Wisteria does choke out an area with its roots, the roots run rapidly underground, thus "My hubby and I have been pulling and digging it up for years to stop if from choking our oaks" .... We can prune it back from the tree once a week and before you can turn around good it will be right back up there taking over the tree. It just moves (grows) so fast during its growing season.

The vines above ground quickly attach to the soil and grow roots everywhere too.. I believe all this has to do with why it takes over so quickly... It "Has the POWER"... from both angles.

I am in no way trying to say that it is invasive everywhere....just that it is here in my own backyard. I assure you it is not from lack of maintenance... We have some pretty back breaking moments that clearly are due to ongoing maintenance.

Some may have a different type of Wisteria.. that behaves itself or the same type as mine may behave itself elsewhere... On the Alabama Invasive Plant List...the Japanese Wisteria is listed as the 2nd most invasive plant (vine) in our state, Preceeded only by KUDZU...

We did not plant it... it was here when we bought this house nearly 5 yrs ago... We have been digging and pulling it ever since... It is beautiful when it blooms but it is not worth my large oaks dying.. and it will choke them out and kill them..

Plants can definitely behave differently in different climates--something that's well behaved in a colder climate can easily be invasive (either in the sense of taking over your yard, or in the sense of getting out into the wild and choking out native plants) in a warmer climate. It's not surprising at all that wisteria would behave much better in a cold climate that's at the bottom end of its hardiness range than it does in the south. Kudzu would probably behave a lot better in zone 5 than it does down south too (not that I would suggest planting it of course!)

Blossom, I won't see any flowers because the plant is dead, right down to the roots. It could have been that I planted it in a very large boxed in area that I had sunk in the ground so the roots wouldn't spread. The hard freeze could have been worse in that box. Don't know for sure.

As for invasive plants MO has it's share. We are kind of in between you all. Some things from the south won't grow year round and some things from the north goes nuts here. It's a pick and choose of what you want to put up with. I have enough to do without having more invasive plants, that's why I put the Wisteria in a contained box and had a fence post tree for the support. Now I'll find something else I guess.

Well, this is pre-bloom. There are actually 4 vines on that trellis. All very well behaved. It requires some periodic pruning. There are 2 China Vlue vines and two purple. The purple are some transplants from our old farm and that vine was some over 50 years old.

It does not invade anywhere other than going up on the trellis!

The prunings make great chicken feed snacks!

I'm going to have to do some serious pruning on that darn wisteria on my grannie cabin or pretty soon. Maybe I can prune it down like they do the tree forms.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, just saying that a plant that is well behaved in zone 5 can be invasive in warmer zones- they can grow a lot faster with milder winters and a longer growing season. For example pink Loosestrife is terribly invasive through most of the northeast, but is rather well behaved here (as long as there are no wetlands nearby). I can't even get one to survive,LOL.

Have any of you tried "abusing" the trunk of a Wisteria to promote blooming? I recall a gardener I met years ago saying he would hit his with the shovel or whatever tool he happened to be using whenever he walked by it- he said "be mean to it, it makes it bloom". That seemed weird to me till I noticed the Wikipedia article mentioning abusing the trunk. It indicates that can shorten the maturation time you have to wait for blooms. I started mine as a whip removed from a friend's yard about 6 years ago. I moved to this house 3 years ago and brought it with me, and had 3 blooms that first spring! That's the only blooms I've seen from it, and I wonder if the "abuse" of moving it instigated the blooms?

I'm training mine to grow in a tree shape, with a piece of rebar to support the trunk. Now it's in a bed, but I believe I need to move it out into the lawn- the runners are starting to travel from it and take over the bed, but I think if its in a spot we mow around I can keep that under control. I'm bound and determined to have a pretty Wisteria, LOL!

Here's an old thread I came across:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/589016/

Sounds like "Amethyst Falls" is a good choice- a hybrid native Wisteria :-)

Not to offend anyone, but there is a difference between an ill managed plant in the garden vs invasive. Giving known "invasives" some berth in a garden and being vigil in their maintenance goes a long way to keeping things from becoming a nuisance or even detriment to a locallity. It is possible to tame the most invasive if you are vigil in its care. Part time care does not work.

Yes, plants behave different in different zones.

NO, never have abused my wisteria. The winters here are abusive enough. It takes 6-8 years for a wistera like mine to bloom from seed.

If you want immediate blooms, besure the plants you get are in bloom or the label states the age otherwise you will be disappointed in expecting it to bloom and if you are abusive to it when it is young your efforts are frugal in getting the thing to bloom anyway due to its immaturity.

My plants have been in the same spot for 10 years...they are happy on their arbor. My only regret is that we did not make the arbor wider. And thats only because I would have liked to have been able to pull my lawn tractor through it! You need a heavy well constructed arbor as the plant is woody.

Every few years we cut ours half way down on the trellis.

During the summer we need to nip and train it periodically as the vine will get long and over hang the trellis. As it is in a spot we have to walk under many times daily, it never gets ignored.

Personally, I would never leave the vine to go on a building. I would not want its tails under the eves or in places that are a pain to maintain. I hate ladders! Having it in a location were it can get care is a plus vs putting the thin in a spot in the garden where it is ignored, however I do have another one growing in another part of the garden that it behaves really well too and I rarely do anything to it other than whack it back in the fall.

I'm just going by what federal and state sites list as invasive.

http://www.invasive.org/species/subject.cfm?sub=3083

Im going on experience. I will not intentionally grow any plant that is against the law though.

The two China Blue wisteria I got from a nursery were not labeled as invasive. Notice, I said CHINA BLUE.. not CHINA or CHINESE wisteria...the labels they had refered to color.

Selling of certain invasives in certain areas are illegal.

This is a chinese wisteria planted by nature, 40 years ago, It has taken over an entire hillside, which is composed of shale where mostly nothing will grow...

I love it, it is a natural wonder. It drops seeds, I keep it confined to the hillside, and it causes no problem, it holds up the hill...

Pittsburgh has a lot of shale.

I bet it smells wonderful!

Here is another picture. When the vines bloom there are a million bees buzzing all over it. The scent is very light, it is not over whelming.

My buds have been huge and heavenly scented! I love the delicate sweet pea like flowers.

My wild wisteria blooms a lot one year and then the next less. It also blooms a little in the fall, it is a very
neat plant if you have room for it.

in the south this plant will go from seed to bloom in six or seven year or less in zone five from seed can take from fifteen to over twenty years to bloom since the actually growing season is much shorter and the plant has to restore the winter damage

it is very common for plants to be grown in colder zones and are great but in the south they are very invasive and will destroy natural areas in very short order

If anyone has any American type that they just have to cut, please send me some slips. I will pay for the postage or whatever.

the most popular one my way is kentucky blue since it blooms on new growth of the prior year and blooms most of the summer

I take it Kentucky Blue is an American variety.

yes it is

Thanks so much.

Well, Merry Christmas all! Just a few real simple wreaths made from the wisteria in my garden!

Heres #1

#2

#3

those are very nice I make mine from cedar as I trim some of the trees it smells nice

If you want to talk about a wisteria taking over the place. There is one in southern Calif that was planted and left to grow. It is now on the yearly garden tour and has taken over 4 or 5 yards. Apparently everyone loves it and has left it grow and just keep extending the arbor each yr. I'll have to check with friends out there and see whose going on tour this year and have them get me the information on it. I've seen pictures and it is beautiful.
Mary