Woodyoak, I think that was me asking questions. Every time I see those gorgeous pictures it makes me want to experiment with one. Are Chinese wisteria more vigorous than Japanese? Which would you recommend and why? Thanks for posting the picture.

Susan, Woodyoak, my wisteria has a metal stake that the plant has completely grown around in a lovely twisty way! I was not ruthless with it, and last year -- a huge disappointment -- there were no blooms! So I'm lopping off suckers and new branches near the bottom and we'll see this May. I'll keep you posted, Susan. Since we are in the same climate, I think mine is just a hardy commoner. But the smell when it blooms -- heaven!
lucia

Lucia - your post confused me a bit at first :-) Woodyoak=Susan too so I wondered why you said my name twice - then I clued in to the fact that you guys don't know my 'other' name!

I'm still in the learning stage re wisteria too although we planted the Chinese one in 2000/2001 (planted it in 2000; realized quickly that it would be too hard to control in that location and moved it to its present location in 2001...)

Chinese wisteria certainly has the reputation of being vigorous - and invasive in warmer areas. Anyone from the south considers it evil!

The main difference between Chinese and Japanese wisteria that I'm interested in is that the Chinese one does most of its bloom before the leaves emerge whereas the Japanese type flowers after the leaves emerge. The flower racemes on the Chinese ones are relatively short so growing them as a tree/bush is said to be the best way to display the flowers. The Japanese ones have very long flower racemes so they are said to be best displayed hanging from a height and thus are best for pergolas. The Japanese one I've planted is 'Lawrence' which is said to have some of the longest flower racemes - 30" or so. It is also supposed to be very hardy and floriferous. It originated near Ottawa, which is very cold. The later flowering would also reduce the risk of late frosts killing the flowerbuds.

My goal in growing both types is to prolong the bloom season since the Chinese one blooms the May long wekend; the Japanese one should bloom the end of May/early June; the Chinese one starts its summer secondary bloom in early July.

Thyme2dig - if you are thinking of trying a wisteria, I'd suggest that, whichever type you choose, you either grow it as a tree or on a rail fence. Both of those give easy access for pruning and it's clearly pruning that promotes the formation of flowering wood. I'd also recommend that it be placed where you can mow the ground around to to control the root suckers or be VERY diligent in watching for them and removing them immediately. I get about 6 or so a summer on the Chinese one. The Japanese one is still young and I haven't seen any yet on it, but I'm sure they'll show up soon...

The 'rules' for pruning are a bit of a PITA and I largely ignore them! I prune all new growth whenever it appears. We really would like to keep the Chinese one about its current size so we're going to try this summer to prune all new growth hard to keep it within the current framework of branches in hope that that will be enough to eliminate the need to cut the whole tree back next spring. It's actually quite easy to keep it pruned because we pass by it several times a day and just snip off new growth as we see it appear. We have long-arm pruners which are invaluable for getting at the stuff on the top of the tree.

Silvergirl - post a picture of the trunk of yours please. I have wrapped the stem of the Japanese one around its stake because I want it to have a neat twisty trunk. At the Niagara Botanical Garden there's one that grows underneath a bench. The first time I saw it I thought it was a sculpture of a reclining woman!

Woodyoak, good information and the picture was really helpfull too.

I've become a parent to 4 different wisteria last year in various stages of developement--two of them about the size of your's and one as young as 2 yrs.

One of the really young ones needs to be move as soon as possible. Do you know when best time would be to do this?

Any hints would be wonderful. Thanks!

cad - I think it's just about impossible to kill wisteria! I'd move it as soon as you can dig. You don't want it to get its roots too well established where it is now or it may come back from roots left in the ground. The roots can extend a long way from the trunk. When we put in the narrow bed along the ditch last year, I was finding wisteria roots about halfway along that bed! So move it soon would be my advice. Are yours free-standing trees or at least easy to get to to prune? From our experience, I'd hate to have to prune one on a pergola - unless you own a cherry-picker! Prune, prune, prune seem to be the secret to lots of flowers and keeping them under control. It wouldn't be easy to do that if you have to climb an 8-10' structure to do it!

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Are the ones you are now parent to of blooming size? If so, in the fall when the leaves drop, remove any seed pods you see. I did a germination test on mine to see if the seed was viable and it was. If you leave the pods on, the first warm days of spring will cause them to explode and shoot the seeds around the yard. So if you want to avoid having seedlings to deal with, remove the pods when you can see them.

This is a very bad picture but, for those who are interested, it might be useful. Can you see that there is a lot of shorter, stubby 'branches' with fatter buds? Once you get those forming, you'll have flowers because the flowers mainly appear on those structures. The guy who prunes the wisterias at the nearby Botanical gardens call them 'hands' because they do look a bit like a bunch of fingers.
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The picture below shows what I see this spring on the Japanese wisteria that we planted in Aug 2007. I'm guessing that they are flowering wood for it. I'm not sure whether they will need another year to 'ripen'/mature or whether we'll get really lucky and have a few flowers this spring.
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In total contrast to our riotous wisteria trees, a Chinese neighbour is very disciplined and neat. She prunes the 'proper' way. This is her youngest wisteria tree - this is its 4th year I think and it looks like it should flower this year. It's about 4' tall.
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If you want to see gorgeous pictures of wisteria and learn lots about them - but not from a very practical point of view :-), find the book in the link below. I picked it up at a second-hand bookstore a few years ago. It's one of the things that kept me persevering in the years before the Chinese wisteria flowered for the first time...

Here is a link that might be useful: wisteria

Woodyoak - how cool! Near Ottawa?? That would be the Experimental Farm - they were involved in the Explorer roses, and many lilac hybridizations. I did not know about the Wisterias - I may need to look into those. Where did you source yours?

Nancy.

Nancy - I don't think it was the Experimental Farm. The books says the variety 'Lawrence' 'was discovered growing on a cottage in Lawrence Street, Brenford, Ottawa, Canada.' in 1970. I guess that makes it a true cottage plant!

Some other interesting things in the book that I had sort of forgotten about:

The author (an Australian wisteria fanatic :-) says it's not really true that Japanese wisteria flower after the leaves emerge while Chinese wisteria flower before the leaves emerge. He says both of them have the flower and leaves start to emerge at the same time but, since the Chinese flower racemes are shorter, they finish flowering before the leaves are extensive while the longer Japanese racemes take longer before all the flowers open simply because of the length of the raceme so it LOOKS like they flower later!

The pruning instructions in the book are more like what I do - i.e. more or less to prune as often as you need to to control the size and shape to what you want it to be. Essentially the only real mistake in pruning is to NOT prune! Wisterias are long-lived (some in Japan are more than 1200 years old and are considered National Treasures), not bothered by any significant pests or diseases and almost impossible to kill. So, the energy spent in complaining about their vigor/invasiveness would be better invested in controlling them to be spectacular garden plants (my opinion, not his, but I'd bet good money he'd agree with me! :-)

The Japanese wisteria apparently form lots of seed pods while the Chinese ones only produce a few. So the Japanese ones are commonly grown from seed to form the rootstock for grafted Chinese ones. So if you let the rootsucker grow on a grafted Chinese wisteria, you are apt to find yourself with a Japanese wisteria taking over! (My Chinese wisteria is a grafted plant so that is a particularly relevant piece of info for me...)

The description of some of the large Japanese ones are a bit scary - like this description from Robert Fortune (plant hunter) in 1863 - ' it measured 3 feet from the ground, seven feet in circumference and covered a space of trellis work sixty feet by one hundred and two feet.' I think we'll be keeping them to small tree size! Future owners of this house may hate me :-) We'll leave pruning instructions for the next owner whenever we sell....

The link below is to commonly found pruning instructions. I think a lot of people find them a bit intimidating so do nothing, either because they don't know what to do or out of fear of doing it wrong. The important thing to know I think is that you're never going to harm it by pruning it 'wrong' and it NEEDS to be pruned both to control it and it promote flowering.

Here is a link that might be useful: standard pruning instructions

I am a new-comer to the whole gardening thing. I built a new house last fall and just planted trees and flower beds this sping/early summer. I have a wisteria tree that I purchased from a mail order nursery. It came bareroot and appears to be doing quite well. It's loaded with leaves and now has a couple of very long shoots coming out the top of it. So, my question is, how should I prune it this fall? I've read several different things. One said to just prune it to where you like the look of the growth and then others say you have to prune them all of the time.

The tree is around 3 feet tall (not counting the new shoots coming out the top). Should I go ahead and prune the low-lying branches that are around 8 inches from the ground?

Also, there aren't really what I would call "branches" on the tree yet. But, perhaps that's to be expected with such a young tree. I'm sure they will fill-in with time.

Razorback - do you know which species it is? It does make a difference in terms of how to prune it to make it display the flowers to best advantage.... And what is your goal for how you want the tree to look/how big you want it to be - height and width etc.? A wisteria 'tree' is usually more of a big shrub than a tall tree. Try doing a Google image search on wisteria tree and see the variety of styles out there...

Based on my experiece and reading, here are some of the key things to consider:

- Chinese wisteria trees display the flowers best when the 'tree' is a low-branching big shrub. That is because the flower racemes are relatively short and most of the bloom seems to happen before the leaves fully emerge - the leaves are emerging at the same time as the flowers so the last part of the bloom is a bit obscured by leaves - but that's fine because that helps hide the bare stems of the raceme as the individual florets drop off it as the flowers fade with age. The Japanese ones have long racemes so they need to be grown with a reltaively tall bare trunk - so the flowers don't drag on the ground! My Japanese one isn't old enough yet to flower but I'm keeping the bottom 3' of the trunk bare so all the flowering growth will be higher than that. My Chinese 'tree', on the other hand, has branches that are 1' or less above the soil. Since the florets open in succession, by the time the Japanese flower racemes are open from top to bottom, the leaves have fully emerged so the flowers display as dangling under a leafy 'hat' - it's one of the things that make them the recommened wisterias for tall pergolas - the flowers can then dangle down from above without getting tangled, and within easy reach of your nose for sniffing the scent! I'm not familiar with the American types so, if that's what you have, do some research into how long the racemes are and aim to prune accordingly - i.e. if they are short, a low-branching shrub would display them well; if the racemes are long, prune for a taller, straighter trunk to allow the racemes to dangle from above.

- You will most likely need a sturdy support to help in the training - especially if you want a taller tree or shrub relatively quickly. Our diligent Chinese neighbour does not have a support for hers, which she has kept as a very short tree - it is just over 3' tall now and is 5-6 years old. Our Chinese one is 8-10' tall and is 9 or 10 years old - it was 6' or so by it's second year because we wanted a substantial sized shrub quickly. We used two metal poles, one on either side, to support it. By this summer it had got so dense and large that on a windy day, it pulled both supports down as the tree was whipping about in the wind! Once the leaves drop in the fall and we can see what's what, we will prune it down a bit and probably add some heavier metal posts if need be. The Japanese one is only 3 years old and is about 5-6' tall. That one I wrapped in a spiral around a wooden stake - with a sort of 'knee' to one side to provide a support for clematis that I'm growing into it - that's still an experiment... I expect that the spiral trunk will merge and completely engulf the wooden stake, which will eventually rot away. I have read that most wisteria trees in England that date back to Victorian times have a metal stake in the heart of their trunks! Caution required if ever trying to cut one down...!

- I remove all new growth on the stretch of trunk that I want to be bare at the base - plus any suckers coming from the roots. Ideally tear them off, not cut them off. Tearing should remove the bud wood which will help reduce the number of future growths that will arise where you don't want them to. It is sometimes difficult to tear off the root suckers if they are coming from deep down, so sometimes there is no choice but to cut them off.

- Our Chinese neighbour leaves all the whippy new growth until after the leaves come off in the fall. She then prunes it hard to the shape she wants the overall tree to be. Most growths she cuts back to 6" - or even shorter. That gives her a short, sturdy tree. I, on the other hand, cut back all those growths as they arise unless it is something that I want to train to make the tree significantly taller or wider - and that is no longer the case for me since the Chinese one is as tall and wide as I want it to get. The Japanese one will get taller and wider gradually as even with cutting back the new growths, it will get bigger and denser. The main advantage of doing a once-a-year cutting back of the new growths seems to be to make a sturdier tree while, from what I can see, the regular cutting back as the growths appear creates more flowering wood faster. From what I've seen/experienced, every time you cut back one of those growths, there's a high chance that you've triggered formation of a flowering spur. It is most obvious on our Chinese wisteria - almost always in 10-14 days after cutting back a whippy growth, a summer flower appears at that location! Our Chinese wisteria produced summer flowers at the pruning sites from its second year in the ground. It was 5 years before it did a spring bloom but there was never any doubt that it would bloom because there was lots and lots of flowering wood. Our 3 year old Japanese wisteria has not yet flowered - they are not known for summer bloom like the Chinese ones - but it has flowering wood that was obvious for the last two years. Maybe we'll get really lucky and it'll bloom next year but more likely 2012 or 2013.

- You MUST keep the root suckers removed! There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, it's important in order to keep it from getting out of hand and spreading around. Secondly, if it's a grafted plant (check to see if there's an obvious graft union at the base - our Chinese one is grafted...) the root suckes can be an entirely different plant. The roots can even be a different species - Japanese wisteria are, I gather, often used as root stock because they produce more seeds and therefore are most easily grown to provide a stock of roots for grafting. But most important if flowers are your objective, the root suckers are at 'year zero' in pruning to promote flowering wood. So, if you let them grow, they will always be 5-7+ years behind the rest of the tree. So any flowering you get will look sparser than if all the brinches are the same age, flowering together en masse! And, if the root suckers do flower eventually but are a different plant, you'll have a very messy-loooking tree....

- Once the leaves fall and you can see any seed pods, remove the seed pods to prevent the tree from seeding around. The seed pods open explosively on warm days in spring to fling the seeds to substantial distances. The Chinese ones don't produce a lot of seed pods but I gather the Japanese ones produce more. The Japanese ones can be quite ornamental supposedly. But all should be removed at the end of the season.

Here are a few pictures from today:

This is the Chinese one - notice how low to the ground it is. This is as big as we're going to let it get, so we'll likely be pruning out some larger branches this fall to control its size.
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The producion of whippy new growths is slowing so there aren't as many summer flowers produced now. This picture was from July 2, so you can see it's not as showy as the spring bloom but still nice to have:
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This picture is the base of the Chinese one:
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It's a bit hidden by the sucker that I need to go out and rip off(!) but the first branching of the trunk is about 6" above the ground.

This is the young (3 year old) Japanese wisteria:
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Note that the bottom is clear of growth because the flowers that will eventually appear should be ~24-30" long. It would be better to have an even taller trunk but I don't want the tree to be more that 8' tall so I'm keeping the trunk shorter than what I would otherwise consider ideal.

And this is a closer view of the rather pecular arrangement I've made of the trunk of the Japanese wisteria.
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As the trunk ages and thickens it should engulf the stake and merge into one gnarly, twisty mass. The trunks of old wisterias can be really interesting almost sculptural things.

I hope that helps... Good luck with your tree.

It doesn't really keep it from being invasive even when you keep all the suckers trimmed. I'm afraid I will be digging out wisteria for years from the roots mine had extended underground!!! And this is very hard digging. I am going to attempt to insert a couple of the roots in roundup and hope they absorb it, but I have not got to much faith in it.

For all the beauty when it bloomed...the upkeep got to be too much on mine. Now, I have to deal with the roots.
kay

In your zone, Kay, ia wisteria is probably always going to be more vigorous than it is for me. But keeping it controlled is also better than just letting it take over the world. And keeping it to a tree form forces you to keep it pruned and, therefore, better controlled. In their native lands, these are highly valued trees that are grown and tended with care for hundreds of years. Given that that sort of care is not part of North American culture, they are perhaps unsuitable for many domestic gardens here. I'm sure a future owner of this property might curse me for planting them. When we sell, we will leave care instructions for the new owners and pass the torch to them....

Well,
I'll admit I was warned by an older neighbor (even older than me!!) who told me it would be aggressive. I thought I was controlling it by keeping it like a tree and cutting all the vines as snaked out. Ha, It fooled me. It was pretty, but you are right. Things can get out of hand in the garden. Here's how it looked in spring:
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kay

It's an odd angle - are you looking down on it from above and at a distance in that shot? It looks like there's a lot of open space around it...? I would have kept it to a narrower, denser profile I think. Since it's not in a bed with other things, was it possible to mow around it to keep root suckers down? I really have no idea what growing conditions in your zone might do to its vigor... I do wonder about how vigorous wisteria are in places like Devon and Cornwall in England and whether people there find them as fearsome growers as people do in warm North American zones... Flora UK - if you're reading this, can you enlighten us on that issue?

Mine has never bloomed. I hoped it would this spring. Nada.

Well, I have been clipping and trimming and clipping and pruning mine all summer to keep it at 7 ft tall and in tree form. I put extra stakes under it for support. When the leaves began to shrivel a bit, I began watering it more often. Now I am having to water it every day because it is so hot and so dry. The water goes down and down and there are air bubbles, so I know the ground is drinking it up. So terribly dry.

Well, to my surprise and delight I found a bloom forming on it a little while ago! Yup, my Pink Wisteria has a bloom forming...a Lilac colored bloom, that is.

I bought my Pink Wisteria tree at Lowe's two years ago. I wanted the pink one so much, something different from everyone's around here, and although I love the lilac and purple ones too, I am sorely disappointed about it not being the color I thought I was getting (another typical screw up from Lowe's garden center).
I would rather have had the Pink or even an elegant White one. Bummer. :(

But, I am thrilled it is finally going to bloom - at least one bloom anyway. My first Wisteria and it is finally going to bloom!

~Annie

Annie - don't dispair yet... The summer flowers tend to be a darker/different color than the spring ones, so it's possible that the spring flowers on yours may still be pink - you just have to wait and see...

Excellent idea to pull up suckers around the trunk.
I didn't and:

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Libby

Wow, Libby!
It's huge!

Looks like an effigy of two embracing lovers! :)

What a Beautiful Monster!

Yes, definitely keep pruned and get those suckers so they don't go crazy.

My Mom planted one and it ended up taking over her deck, her tree, and the second-floor porch. She eventually *had* to take it down because it started pulling the deck railings off! Crazy. She has two tree ones up front though that she keeps trimmed.

The trunk of old wisterias can be so interesting. The main reason I spiralled the Japanese wisteria trunk around its support stake is in hopes of making an interesting sculptural look as it ages and the stems merge. Libby - that is an interesting one - but not the best idea for controlling the wisteria :-)

There's an interesting wisteria in the Niagara Botanical Gardens - its trunk is under a bench! At first glance, the trunk looks like it's a wooden sculpture of a reclining figure. There's a garden in the Niagara area that is open to the public by appointment that is overrun with wisteria. They have about 30 different varieties. For the most part, they've let them 'run wild' through the property. There is one place where they wove all the root suckers into a sort of living wicker wall around a seating area!

They're fascinating plants but I really think a tree form is the only way it makes sense to grow them. It forces a greater degree of control and commitment on the part of the gardener as well as producing a spectacular flowering tree.

I love Wisteria, love, love, love. Your posts have inspired me and scared me while thinking about purchasing one. I realize you must be dedicated to this vine/tree and understand why my father, decades ago removed my Mom's and asked her to never plant another one! I had thought that perhaps I could train one on a chain link fence that separates one area of my yard from another but now I am wondering..... would a chain link fence be study enough to hold one?

I wouldn't grow a wisteria in any other way than as a tree - preferably in an open area where you have easy access to remove root suckers. I also think they look much more striking as a tree than as a vine that will inevitably look messy and be harder to prune. It is way too easy to get lazy about pruning a wisteria on a fence or pergola! The tree form forces you to pay attention to the pruning - and also makes the pruning easy so it is not an onerous chore that you end up putting off.

as we traveled to Florida this past spring, i noticed hundreds of wild wisterias strangling the trees along the highway in Tennesee and Alabama!
roseberri

I believe I have a wisteria tree started (white)...it came under my fence from the neighbors tree or from one of his seeds...in one summer it has shot straight-up to maybe ten feet...has the same leaves,no vines, trunk green, 2 to 3" diameter thick, strong and straight....does this sound right for a young tree...my neighbor says it is not one as it has not lost any leaves and his is bald already...but after reading-up I think it is...early on I thought tree would be best and I cut all side branches off up to 4.5' and now the side branches are already 1" thick at least and look to be growing as long as I will let them grow...will the trunk stay 4.5' high...should I cut off more side branches to make main trunk into higher tree or is it too late for that...like I said...the whole thing is 10' or more now at tip and growing so fast...it has maybe 6 main thick side branches now...main trunk split into 2 at 6' mark...I need to control it NOW into tree form...but I need to know if I started right...also...will this take long to flower...Thank you...Betty

I have no idea if that is what wisteria does in your climate or not, but that kind of growth wouldn't happen in the climate here. At ~10 years old, my Chinese wisteria main trunk is only about 5-6" or so in diameter at the base. It took about 5 years for side branches to get to be an inch or more across and most are not that large. Are you sure it's a wisteria? If it is a wisteria and it's a root sucker or seedling, it could take a lot of years to bloom - and then the flowers could be disappointing... If the 'mother' tree/vine is a grafted plant, the root stock could be - most likely is - from a seedling, which could well be a nondescript thing. So, even if it is a wisteria, it may not be worth growing. If you want a wisteria, I'd suggest you get rid of whatever this is and buy a known variety so you're sure of what you have.

THX...That sounds like good advice...my neighbor had said he had a suckling come up in his garden about 4 feet from my brick wall...he said he pulled it out but could not get all the root and it looked like it was growing in my direction...actually 2 plants had come up and the smaller one I just yanked out and stuck in a pot....it took a while but it is growing fast now...it's a third of the sz of the bigger one...but you are right...it most likely is from the root stock which would not be desirable...I just started to read-up on wisterias and had no idea they were grafted as they are...so this is a bit disappointing cuz it has been great having something grow so fast and high in the garden...my dad had a wisteria tree in his yard that I loved and I was looking forward to having one like his....looks like I will have to spend the money to get a good one...just out of curiosity I might let it grow another summer...will let you know what it does...I am quite sure it is wisteria...the smaller one I potted is behaving much more like a vine and looks like pictures I see online...I love volunteer plants...this one is amazing with the growth it has shown...it could be a good experimental project for me...with all the vigor it has I could try to sculpt it and make it grow into an interesting form...

I am contemplating a wisteria tree. I called the nursery back to get a feel for what I seen over the weekend.

One was a grafted straight trunk tree. (Which I am researching might be the best route to not ensure headaches later with containing)

They then have one that was a shrub...that was then thinned to allow what looks like three trunks that twist rise up to a canopy trunk. (Not grafted) beautiful...but...I don't want it to cause problems in the flower bed I wish to plant it. I want a tree form even though the twisted tree vine was wild and exotic. I don't wish for it to over power the spiral/serpentine weeping cherry that will go next to it with space to spare.

Is there any advice one can give me...if I opt to go this route?

Libby...that wisteria trunk is a piece of art! Just beautiful...

I also have a very sturdy trellis...three sided that I could plant that tree form vine. Plant in the center and train to wrap around? Nothing for it to fight roots in a flower bed with...

Those with wisteria...would it be more wise to plant here next to a trellis with nothing competing for life? (The sapling Rose of Sharon could be moved)

Upon rereading this post...I have vetoed planting one on the trellis. Tree form it will be. Having hardscape would surely allow me to notice suckers when they start.