Broken stems can serve as entry points for fungi and other pests so, depending on the severity of the injury, I would cut them off. Eventually, the plant will replace the stem with a new one but since human-to-hydrangea communications do not work well :o) you may have to wait until the plant decides to grow a new stem. It may regrow the stem quickly or you may have to wait until another growing season.

A single old wood stem that has no buds but has leafed out may have had a rough winter or lacked sufficient moisture to support the flower buds. I would not remove it just because it produced no blooms on a given year. So no, it would not necessarily be spent and does not have to be removed.

Old shrubs do have to be pruned when flower production is smaller than normal for several years running and nothing else can account for the problem (moisture, weather, lack of fertilizer). This happens after many/several years (it varies but think 'more than 5-7 years' for example). But when this happens, you would notice it on the whole shrub and not with a single stem.

Luis

Hydrangeas are considered 'caning' shrubs and they do produce new stem growth from the root crown. That's one of the supposed big advantages of selections like Endless Summer - even if they die back to the ground with winter cold, they will resprout from the base. It is also the concept behind rejuvenating old or very overgrown hydrangeas - removing upto 1/3 of the oldest canes each year at the base encourages the development of fresh, vigorous basal shoots.

Older growth can indeed be 'spent' or fail to bud, whether due to old age or to cold damage - this is called dead wood. If there are no signs of budding (what you see now are only leaf buds) along these stems and the wood looks gray and dull, these can and should be removed back as far as you can. You can always check to see if the stem is still viable by scraping the bark. If it shows signs of moist, green tissue under the bark, it is still alive. If it looks dry and woody, it is dead and should be pruned out.

When in doubt, the pruning of bigleaf hydrangeas can always be limited to the three D's - damaged, dead or diseased wood.

Posted by luis_pr z7/8 FW TX (My Page) on Sun, Mar 28, 10 at 6:14

human-to-hydrangea communications do not work well :o)

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Truer words have never been spoken. =)

Okay.....to prune I go!

Thanks people.