Yes, it's fragrant both times. The fragrance isn't strong though - it doesn't carry far. Normally the spring bloom is so profuse that the scent is noticeable in the surrounding area in early morning. The summer bloom is considerably less profuse so the scent isn't obvious unless you sniff the individual flowers. The young Japanese wisteria flowered for the first time this spring - its scent is really nice too.

Do you mean the leaves on the bottom, right side of the picture? If so, those are some of the pale pink hardy hibiscuses in the driveway border. The picture is taken at an angle while standing on the driveway probably about 15'+ away from the wisteria... The angle of the picture foreshortened things, making the hibiscus look larger - and closer to the wisteria - than it really is. (There are some of those hibiscuses beside the wisteria though....)

Hmm.... It looks like either there is little interest in these fascinating plants - or you're bored by more wisteria pictures from me! :-) I was hoping someone else with a Chinese wisteria - or someone who has seen one flowering in their neighbourhood - might chime in regarding their experience with summer flowers on them.... Wisterias are certainly a bit of work re pruning and such, but they are beautiful and fascinating plants. We are still learning things about them after having them in the garden for almost 20 years. The summer flowers still involve a bit of mystery for us. Some years we get a lot and some years not very many even though we prune the new growth - which seems to provoke the flowers - every year. Not all pruning of new growth generates flowers, so we're not sure why sometimes it happens but not other times. Summers after a bad winter that killed a lot of flowerbuds seem to result in more summer flowers - which seems logical if the vine is trying to replace lost flowering wood. The summer flowers also look a bit different than the spring flowers but it's hard to precisely define the difference :-) I think the spring flower racemes have the florets packed more densely while the summer racemes seem to have the florets spaced further apart. I looked through pictures of ours over various years, trying to 'see' the difference: - We cut back some growth this morning that was extending beyond its allowed space, and harvested a couple of the summer flowers for a vase. (Nice fragrance to go with breakfast this morning!) You can see that the florets seem to be spaced well apart: This picture is from a couple of years ago, showing a summer bloom on the tree: And this is a picture of a cluster of spring flowers from a few years ago: When you look at the spring picture, it looks like the florets aren't all that much further apart than the summer ones in the picture of them on the tree. Perhaps the difference is that they open more quickly along the raceme in spring....? One of the things about wisteria that attract me is that they raise lots of questions to think about :-) There is not a great deal of reliable, detailed information on them that is readily available. I think their long-time-to-flowering-age makes them less attractive as a research subject! And I just noticed in the spring picture above that the florets seem to be growing in a spiral! Logical perhaps because of the vine's twining growth habit, but I had never noticed that effect on the flowers before just now! Anyone else out there fascinated with these plants....?

Just noticed that while I responded to this post almost 20 minutes ago, it is still showing the comment "be the first to respond" and has not updated although my response is clearly showing. Some Monday morning gremlins........???