'Forest Pansy' bronzes out here in the frequently dull and cool Seattle area also. Typical summer condition is purple leaves on the ends, where the leaves are the youngest, bronze leaves behind those and greenish leaves in the center. Oldest leaves being lost to inadequate watering (a common condition in my area, where "it rains all the time" but summers are actually quite droughty) will have premature fall color. Many other kinds of purple-leaved trees have poor color retention. The basic cause it their genetics, the best selections stay a good deep purple. 'Forest Pansy' is simply not one of those selections.

Ken - sure they do. Just maybe not as early as they do in MI :-) Hairmetal - the zones were not created to provide that information. They only reflect a 30 year compilation of average minimum low temps, nothing more. Even the USDA admits the hardiness zones lack any supporting data that would expand their usage to cover such thing like duration of cold periods, amount of snow cover, soil moisture, amount of winter sun, etc. In their words "Such factors are not taken into account in the USDA PHZM......All PHZMs are just guides. The Sunset zonal maps may be much more applicable to the need to determine appropriate chill periods, as they DO take many other climate issues besides just winter lows into account and are far more detailed than the USDA zone system. But they should be takes as guides only as well. Eastern redbuds are listed as appropriately hardy for all 24 of the Sunset western climate zones, yet they certainly do not thrive in them all equally well. Most struggle up here in the PNW and tend to be short lived at best.

Thanks - I probably would plant it again, but I'm a big fan of purple leafed plants. Some people don't like them. I think redbuds are supposed to be good to garden under since they're deep rooted. Some flowering trees are bothered by Japanese Beetles which we didn't have to worry about several years ago. They don't bother redbuds or dogwoods. They do go after crab apples, serviceberry, mimosa and sandcherry and others. If I could go back twenty years when our yard was bare, I would plant more smallish flowering trees and less trees that eventually get huge. We planted several maple trees, pin oaks, tulip poplar, sycamore and pecan. Some of our choices weren't very smart but it's hard to know when you're starting out what's going to be important in 20 years. I think it would be pretty to mix some flowering dogwoods in around your redbuds in the hollow. They look good together.

The cultivar comes out strongly colored and then becomes less purple as the season advances. It does not leaf out green and then turn purple later. Some purple leaved tree cultivars do yield a percentage of purple seedlings but since tree cultivars are typically considered to be clonal (unlike named seed strains of flowering annuals and annual vegetables) a purple seedling of a 'Forest Pansy' would still not be an example of that same named variety. An exception is certain Rose Family trees such as mountain ashes and hawthorns that may give off apomictic seedlings, that is ones resulting from a particular asexual seed production process on the tree. Such seedlings are clones of the parent specimen. But when seeds are gathered from these trees and seedlings raised from them it is not known under ordinary circumstances if apomixis was involved until the plants raised get big enough to show they are true to type.