Sounds like cotton mealy bug. I would buy a product labeled for cotton mealy bug and use per instructions. It sounds like what your doing isn't working, so it may be time for a new game plan. You need a penetrating surfacant to get past the cotton protection. Something your alcohol is not doing. randy

Yep, looks exactly like my GW! It's a beauty and I wouldn't part with mine. Blooms a lot, has pretty good disease resistance and is winter hardy to the tips most years. Sadly, I can't seem to get it to set many hips and if it does (and the squirrels don't get them) the seeds don't germinate very well. In five years trying I don't have a single seedling from it!

HI and welcome. Some brugs like to grow bushy, and you can tell which ones just by looking at them. If you leave them to grow bushy, you'll probably get tons more blooms. Some folks like to remove all the side branches except the top leader. This creates a tree form. I think it's just one's personal preference. I've tried both. I'm not sure if pruning them will make them bloom sooner. I would just leave them alone, since flowers appear on the growing tips of most brugs. Enjoy!

Suzy, by the way, I hope your shipping container DOES turn out to be robbery proof! Are you growing other Chinas in your woods? I admit I find it hard to reconcile those sun-loving plants with the mental image I have of your property. Well, to continue: the pleasures aren't necessarily what we thought they'd be. There's the expectancy: seeing that the seeds did sprout, that the plant did survive that hideous freeze, that the cutting stuck in the ground the fall before did start to leaf out. I love the new foliage of the once-blooming old roses, so fresh and tender. It starts to get disease right around the start of flowering time, so you have this window, once the roses have leafed out and are forming their buds, where there's just beautiful living green. I've thought about the difference between what my garden is to me and to my rare visitors. The guest sees what's there at the moment; they haven't lived the history. They're not thrilled at the little Daphne laureola, which was dug up in the hills nearby and successfully transplanted; they don't get excited that the Cyclamen cilicium is seeding around. They enjoy the handsome Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata', but don't share my triumph at having figured out that it was exactly the right plant for that spot. My sister the horticulturalist, a wonderful plant person, saw more than the guest would who just wants a sea of flowers, but even she was there only at one point in time. I'm in my garden through the year, living the succession of flowers and all the various beauties, but experiencing also the soil--lots of soil--the weeds and little herbs, the change of the weather and the seasons. And even though I'm not very observant, still I see quite a lot, sooner or later, simply by being there month after month and year after year. What is most beautiful in the garden is serendipitous. I can never wholly plan for it, though I do a great deal of serious planning. Some combination of plant and moment and light and my mood do it. There are moments of delight, sometimes with seemingly slight causes: I love oak leaves and acorns and buds, and have been tickled pink by clematis stems and foliage. Scent will do it too, of course. Titian, that's exactly it.