Wisteria - royally luxurious, enchanting, incredible

Author: Elena N. https://floristics.info/ru/index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact&id=19 Category: Garden plants Published: January 20, 2019Last edits: January 13, 2021

flowers (Greek Glicinia - “sweet”) , or wisteria (Latin Wisteria) , belong to the genus of tree-like climbing plants of the Legume family, growing in subtropical regions and attracting attention with their fragrant, hanging purple inflorescences. The Latin name “wisteria” was given to the wisteria flower in honor of the professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania Caspar Wistar. There are 9 known species of the wisteria genus, but only Chinese wisteria and Japanese wisteria, or abundantly flowering, are grown as garden crops.

Planting and caring for wisteria

• Planting: sowing seeds in the ground - in early spring, for seedlings - in December, planting seedlings in the ground - in May.
• Flowering: from late March to late summer.
• Lighting: bright sun in the first half of the day, then diffused light or partial shade.
• Soil: nutritious, well-drained, slightly alkaline.
• Watering: from spring to late summer - moderate: the soil in the tree trunk circle should be slightly moist all the time, and from mid-September watering is gradually reduced.
• Feeding: during the growing season, once a week alternately with mineral and organic solutions.
• Pruning: in summer, to maintain the shape of the bush.
• Reproduction: sometimes by seeds, but more often by layering.
• Pests: clover mites, aphids.
• Diseases: chlorosis.

Read more about growing wisteria below.

Botanical description

The wisteria plant in nature is a woody deciduous vine with drooping branches, reaching 15-18 meters in height. Wisteria leaves are odd-pinnate, pubescent when young, up to 30 cm long, with the number of leaflets from 7 to 13. Fragrant purple, lilac or white flowers are collected in drooping racemes up to 30 cm long. Wisteria blooms in the spring, at the end of March and can bloom throughout the summer.

The wisteria tree is in great demand in landscape design; it is grown in various forms - both as a vine wrapping around the walls of a gazebo or fence frame, and as a standard tree. Wisteria is also grown at home in a container method in the form of a tree, but still, home wisteria is not as common as garden wisteria, so let’s talk about growing wisteria in the garden.

Peculiarities

Chinese wisteria, whose Latin name is Wisteria sinensis, is an ornamental vine belonging to the legume family. A representative of the genus Wisteria has a woody surface and reaches a height of 20 to 25 meters. The shoots naturally twist against their axis, and the young branches are also covered with snow-white fluff. The leaf blades can reach a length of almost 30 centimeters, consisting of 8-12 small leaves. Racemose inflorescences also grow to almost 30 or even 40 centimeters. The diameter of each flower ranges from 2 to 2.5 centimeters.

The corolla is painted in various shades of purple or white. The bell-shaped calyx is covered with fluff. The fruits of Chinese wisteria are pubescent beans, each of which contains from one to three brown seeds up to 1.5 centimeters long. The crop blooms from May to June, and fruits can appear from late spring to late summer. In good weather, secondary flowering occurs in September.

Growing wisteria from seeds

Growing conditions

Wisteria seeds are planted in late November or early December. Wisteria seeds are sown on the surface of a soil mixture consisting of leaf soil (four parts), turf soil and sand (one part each), sprinkled with a thin layer of sand on top, sprayed with water from a spray bottle and, covering the container with glass to create a greenhouse effect, placed in a dark, warm place. (22-25 ºС) place, keeping the soil slightly moist all the time. Wisteria sprouts from seeds in 3-4 weeks, and after another week and a half it will be possible to move the seedlings to the light, providing them with protection from direct sunlight.

• Why do seedlings need to be plucked, and is it possible to avoid this procedure?

When the seedlings have formed two leaves, they are planted in separate containers along with a lump of earth on the roots and watered with a weak solution of potassium permanganate.

Seedling care

Seedlings dropped into individual containers must be accustomed to the environment in which they will live. To do this, they need to be taken out to an unheated part of the house for a couple of hours a day or kept under a slightly open window, provided that there is no draft in the room.

You can sow wisteria seeds directly into open ground in early spring, then the seedlings grow adapted to their environment and subsequently delight with their hardiness.

Reproduction

Wisteria can be propagated in several ways. The seed method is considered the most unreliable, since no one can say in advance what the final result will be. A vine from seeds may never even bloom. Therefore, most gardeners prefer vegetative propagation.

Cuttings

At the end of autumn, cut off woody cuttings from wisteria. Make the cuts obliquely, above the kidneys. Tie them up, dig them into damp sand, and put them in a cool room. In the spring, plant the cuttings in a greenhouse outside or in a planting box. Be sure to make a shelter on top. Not all cuttings root. Those of them that have sprouted roots should be planted in prepared holes in a permanent place.

Graft

This is the most labor-intensive method of reproduction. First you need to grow species wisteria from seeds and plant it in open ground. The plant can be grafted when the roots reach 0.6 cm in width. In the fall, dig it up and separate the roots from the stem. Place them in a container with sand and store them in a cool, dark place. In December, transfer the seedlings to a warm place for 2 weeks and you can vaccinate.

Make a 2 cm cut on cuttings of varietal wisteria with several mature buds. The same cut is made on the roots of non-varietal wisteria. Connect the sections and secure them with tape. Immerse the plants in the soil to the grafting level. Cover the top with film. After a while, shoots will appear on the axillary buds. In spring, plant wisteria on the site.

Rooting cuttings

The procedure is carried out in the spring, before the leaves appear. Choose a healthy shoot located closer to the soil surface. Make an oblique cut on the layering with a sharp, clean knife. Treat it with indolylacetic acid. Place the cuttings with the cut down in a container filled with a peat-sand mixture or simply bend them to the ground. Leave only the tops on the surface. Before autumn, roots should appear on the cuttings. But cuttings can only be separated and planted from the parent plant next spring.

Planting wisteria

When to plant

Wisteria is planted in the spring, after the last frost has passed. All types of garden wisteria are cold-resistant, but it is better not to expose young plants to the risk of frostbite. Before planting wisteria, you need to determine in which area it will grow best - wisteria is not an annual, and if you are interested in the quality of flowering, then keep in mind that it should be in the sun for half a day, so choose the sunniest and most sunny place for planting. protected from gusts of wind, the soil is nutritious, well-drained and slightly alkaline.

How to plant

Wisteria seedlings are transplanted into holes measuring 60x60x50 cm, having previously added mineral fertilizers to the soil in the digging area at the rate of 25-30 g per square meter of planting area. Be prepared for the fact that wisteria will not show signs of life for some time - it grows for a long time, and in the first years it forms only long thin shoots. In general, you will be able to see beautiful flowers of wisteria grown from seeds only after 4-5, or even 10 years.

Caring for wisteria in the garden

Rules of care

From spring to late summer, wisteria requires moderate watering so that the soil underneath is always slightly moist, but never wet. If there is no rain in spring, then you will have to water more diligently, because the buds may fall off and you will not see the flowers for which the plant was planted. From mid-September, watering is gradually reduced.

• Hydrangea: planting and care in autumn

In order for wisteria to bloom on time and abundantly, it is fed once a week during the active growing season, alternating liquid mineral fertilizers (Kemira-lux, for example) with organic ones (mullein infusion in a ratio of 1:20). It is useful to water the wisteria with chalk water once a season (100 g of chalk per bucket of water). When the flowers begin to fade, remove the faded inflorescences. In addition, you will have to trim dry branches, tie them up and guide the shoots so that they do not fall and grow in the desired direction.

Before the onset of winter, you need to hill up the rosette high, remove the vine from the supports and lay it on the tree trunk, as is done with climbing roses, preparing them for wintering, and then sprinkle with dry leaves and cover with spunbond or lutrasil. You don’t have to do all this, but if there is no snow in winter, the wisteria may freeze.

Bloom

When does wisteria bloom? Chinese wisteria blooms at the age of three, Japanese - at the age of ten, so wisteria is a plant for those who can wait. Wisteria of Chinese varieties blooms from April, and all the buds open at the same time. Wisteria profusely blooms from May to June. Make sure that there is no excess nitrogen in the soil, otherwise the wisteria will grow greenery, but will not bloom.

Trimming

Wisteria is pruned to stimulate flowering and for plant formation. To form a standard tree, one strong shoot is selected and the rest are removed. If you grow wisteria as a climbing plant, then it is advisable to remove the abundantly growing side shoots so that the wisteria does not waste energy on overly growing greenery, but directs it to the formation of buds.

Pruning wisteria in the spring involves removing young shoots that stick out so that their foliage does not hide the flower clusters from view during flowering. In addition, a young lateral annual branch of wisteria can produce an inflorescence this year only if you shorten it to 30 cm.

Formative pruning of the plant is carried out in the summer: the side shoots are cut by 20-40 cm, and at the very end of summer by another 10-20 cm. However, try not to get carried away with the process, otherwise you may deprive yourself of the pleasure of seeing the lush bloom of wisteria.

Wisteria propagation

We have already described in this article the propagation of wisteria by seed. It is worth adding that many of the sprouted and even grown seedlings may never produce flowers - no one knows why this happens. But we have repeatedly told our readers that propagation by seeds is unreliable and it is much better to use vegetative methods of propagation.

• Planting Lychnis in open ground and further care

Wisteria is most easily propagated by layering. To do this, in the spring, select a one-year-old shoot, make an oblique cut in the middle of its length, bend the shoot and place it with the cut on a pot with a clay-turf substrate, secure the branch in this position and dig in, leaving the top of the shoot free. It will be possible to separate the rooted cuttings from the mother plant only next spring.

Various publications write that it is possible to propagate wisteria by cuttings or grafting on roots, but I don’t know anyone who has actually succeeded in doing this, but my layerings have taken root.

Pests and diseases

Sometimes wisteria is invaded by aphids or clover mites. Aphids are destroyed with an insecticide, and mites - with an acaricidal drug. If wisteria grows in alkaline soil, it can be affected by chlorosis, which causes its leaves to turn yellow. To combat the disease, root fertilizing of wisteria with iron salts is used.

Preparing for winter

Most varieties of wisteria are very sensitive to cold. It is especially destructive for young plants. Therefore, it is preferable to provide them with shelter for the winter. In autumn, the vine is freed from its supports and the shoots are laid on the ground. The root zone is sprinkled with a thick layer of soil. The shoots are covered with dry leaves or spruce branches. With age, wisteria becomes more frost-resistant, and it can be covered less carefully.

Most of the young shoots die from frost. But you don’t need to worry too much, because they still need to be pruned in the spring.

Types and varieties

Chinese wisteria (Wisteria chinensis)

Densely leafy vine up to 15-20 m in height. The leaves are odd-pinnate, large, initially pubescent, but become smooth over time. The flowers are in loose racemes up to 30 cm long and light lilac in color. The fruit is a bean up to 15 cm long. This species has a garden form with white flowers (f. alba) and a form with double flowers (f. plena).

Wisteria floribunda

It is also colloquially “Japanese”, since it comes from the Japanese islands - it differs from the Chinese one in its smaller size (only 8-10 m in length), larger leaves up to 40 cm in length and the number of leaves up to 19, a large number of inflorescences on the plant, and also their larger sizes - up to 50 cm in length. The flowers themselves are smaller than those of Chinese wisteria, violet-blue in color, and bloom gradually, starting from the base of the cluster. This species is more cold-hardy than Chinese wisteria. There are garden forms with white, pink, purple double flowers and a variegated form with variegated leaves.

In addition to these two most popular species, beautiful wisteria (Wisteria venusta), bush wisteria (Wisteria frutescens) and large-tasted wisteria (Wisteria macrostachys) are also known in cultivation, on the basis of which American gardeners from Minnesota developed Blue Moon wisteria, which can winter in the garden even without shelters.

Content

• Chinese wisteria Description
• Bloom
• Varieties and forms

Takashi Hososhima / Personal archive

If among trees the queen of flowering is considered to be magnolia, then among lianas it is wisteria . A unique group of brightly flowering of alien beauty , with extremely rapid growth and regeneration. Wisterias (aka Wisteria) have only one drawback - insufficient frost resistance for abundant flowering in the Middle Zone, but gardeners have also achieved a breakthrough .

The topic will be important to everyone who loves royally lush flowering in gardens and is ready for a unique feat for this. Of the 9-10 types of wisteria, the most winter-hardy are considered to be large-clustered, Chinese, Japanese (abundantly flowering), beautiful and shrubby.