I have a Winter Beauty!! It is lovely!!! I don't recall it being any more expensive than any of the others. Like I say, mine came though Curt Hanson, from Tim B.
It has outgrown all the others by far. My biggest WH. Maybe 8 feet tall and 10 feet wide. It is HUGE! It has been planted about 10 years now. Came in a 3 gallon pot.
This photo is the only one I could find quickly, it is from about 4 years ago.
Don't tell the deer at my house that W H are good eating...... I have 17 acres and a pond right in prime deer country. They have never eaten anything at my house, except some new daylily foliage in my seedling beds in the spring. I don't know why, except that they do have a lot of browse and habit out in the woods. There are a lot of new homes in the area though, so I am sure my time is coming.
I have a prarie fire crabapple in my front yard, about 18 - 20 feet from my front door. They will be out there delecately picking crabs off it, but not eating the twigs.
Sometimes I will get a little rubbing damage on trees from the young bucks. Usually a large tomato cage, cut at the sides, and put around the tree, but not stuck in the ground will discourage them. Seems the bucks get the metal on their antlers and don't like it.
I do allow hunting to help keep them under control.
Well those are mighty polite deer Jules!
OK for my 4b zone H Virginiana. Which is heartiest I don't need the most beautiful. I would like strong laterals and tree rather than bush tendencies. What do you have VV for me to buy in this area. I want pictures.
This message was edited Oct 18, 2006 12:18 PM
I have tried both H. mollis and H. mollis 'Pallida' up here in MN. Neither lasted more than two seasons. But I only tried each once. Our Arboretum has an H. x intermedia 'Arnold Promise', at least 20 years old. Seems to do fine. Blooms usually in Jan or Feb, whenever we have a temporary winter thaw. I remember one year it bloomed in December, after an early and exceptionally cold spell. (BTW, this is another one that no one seems to know about at the Arb. You need to snowshoe out there to see it.) Of all the intermedia's, I am guessing Arnold Promise is your best bet, but certainly not as hardy as virginiana or vernalis. Virginiana will always want to be a shrub, although I don't see why you couldn't prune it into a small tree form. Heck, the deer do it.
My plant:
And another pic:
And another:
That is interesting, Leftwood, as the arboretum near me, Dawes Arboretum, does not recommend Arnold's Promise. They have had theirs die to the ground more than once when was colder than normal here, but I cannot quote you the actual temperature that it happened at.
I won Arnold's P. at a meeting one time in a raffle. Because of Dawe's not recommending, I almost gave it to someone else, then decided to go ahead and bring it home. I put it in a more sheltered spot and crossed my fingers. So far, so good, but it has only been about 4 years.
Dawes has a large collection of W H... they are warmer than I am, I believe they are technically zone 6.
Dawes has a plant help line - you can call from anywhere and ask questions. Mike Eckert is the one you would want to ask about the W H. He could tell you exactly what issues they had with Arnold's.
So yours is a virginiana? I like that very much. It is small at the base and broad at the top. Yes I could prune. I don't like to experiment much with expensive hopefulls that grow in zone 6. I read that they need wet or moist soil is that true or can I put them in good neutral high loam soil with irrigation?
Beautiful tree Rick.
I had AP in my old garden go through -25F in 1993 and bloom late that winter. I have seen it at the montreal BG, zone 5a or 4b I think.
During the last really cold winter, when at our MN Arb it got down to -36 F, I couldn't say what happened with the flowering on Arnold Promise. But the foliage buds and twigs were not damaged for sure. This AP is definitely NOT in a moist spot. West sun, at the edge of woods that has grown up by it. Certainly, it was origingally planted all by itself in field grass with wood chips at its base.
My virginiana grows in neutral to alkaline soil. It does get a lot of moisture. You can see the rain gutter dispensing near its base. Still, in the dry of the summer when all the grass turns brown (I don't water), I don't water the Hamamelis either.
When I was searching for it in wild MN, I was kind of surprised where I found it: extremely sandy soil. But it was on the north side of a very large hill, and about two-thirds of the way down. There was a dry creek bed at the base, and on the other side of the small crevice, it was apparently wet enough to support a few Ilex verticillata, although that was the driest place I had ever seen the species grow. The Hamamelis grew under a natural and full canopy of mixed oaks. The area was rich with native ephemeral flowers and sharp-lobed hepatica.
I don't think virginiana needs extra moisture. Remember rcn4's mountain pic earlier? It doesn't look particularly inviting, moisture-wise.
Rick
You have made me happy and educated to the perfect spot for my OWN 'Arnold'. I am excited and off to get me one of these specimens for my woodland garden I am expanding. Leftwood you are the best! Thank You. Steve.
H. virginiana is common across the lower peninsula of Michigan, including the northern LP, parts of which are zone 4b and maybe even 4a, in soils ranging from alkaline clay to acid sand. In parts of MI rainfall is less than 30" a year. I have seen it growin in quite dry situations.
I went back and looked at my notes from the WH class I took at Dawes. What they said about AP was, during the year we had -25 and -30 for a about a week, it died to the ground, then grew back, so they don't recommend it because it died to the ground, when others did not. I don't have down what year that was that I took the class, but I think it must have been about 12 years or so ago. The year of that cold, I was -34 by my therm. where I live, which is quite a bit north of Dawes.
I am glad you have said AP has done well for people in the cold other than this info I had from Dawes - because the one I got in that raffle had exceptional shape, and I planted it right beside my front door. :-) It's full shade, but rather bright shade, and the long, full bright blooms just light that area up in the early spring.
Here is a photo of it from 04... boy has it grown! I will have to get a new photo of the entire plant this winter.
This close up of it's blooms is from this spring (06)... was out testing the close up of a Nikon Coolpix I got last year. Not much depth of field, but it is a fun camera for close up flowers. No manual focus though. :-( I just bought a Cannon Digital Rebel this summer - so will have even more fun photographing the WH next year!
While I was looking for these -- I did find a photo of Orange Beauty blooms. The center cluster of blooms is pretty blurry... but the one down lower left is ok.
However, compare to the twigs of the Arnold's Promise above.... which has blooms all up and down the branches.
Orange Beauty only has a couple blooms you can see -- and that's looking down through the braching. It either did not like full sun, didn't like my amended clay soil, or something. Most of mine are planted on a fairly steep hill, that is all clay "topsoil" fill that's several feet deep... so it's clay, but it's not compact, and the top couple feet had mushroom compost, other compost, leaf mulch and sharp sand worked in before it was smoothed off - so it's not full clay. All the other WH's do great in it.
Now, Curt plants his in shade, in deep woodsy rich soil. Orange Beauty had just a few more flowers for him than for me.
If the one you bought was covered in heavy bud -- maybe we just had bad ones... or you got a good one!! It's a lovely color when it does bloom!
