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At Petersham Nurseries we endeavour to choose a comprehensive selection of the most beautiful wisteria, which also includes some of the more unusual specimens. Please contact us in advance to check that we have your choice or choices.
OUR FAVOURITES...
* Wisteria x formosa ‘Issai’ : lilac-blue flowers in early summer followed by large velvet pods. Masses of flowers, even on young shoots. 7 x 4m (22 x 12ft)
* W. frutescens: not easily available, this has fragrant pale to darker lilac flowers with a yellow spot, from the US, less vigorous than the China and Japan species. Racemes 10 to 15cm in length
* W. floribunda ‘Violacea Plena’: a vigorous climber with double violet-purple flowers and extremely long racemes
* W. floribunda ‘Rosea’: also ‘Honbeni’, flowers are a pale rose-pink, purple tips, long racemes
* W. floribunda ‘Macrobotrys’: perhaps best grown over an arch or pergola, the lilac darker-tinged flower racemes are a remarkable length, hanging to a metre or more. (AGM)
* W. sinensis ‘Alba’: The white version of W. sinensis. AGM 2002. Lovely in a white-flowered/evergreen planting plan.
* W. floribunda ‘Alba’: Also known as ‘Shiro Noda’, the white-flowered Japanese wisteria, with a lilac tint, racemes up to 60cm long. AGM 2002
* W. sinensis: Hugely popular, very tall, vigorous, lilac flowers, first introduced into the UK in 1816 from a garden in Canton, China. AGM 2002
• AGM denotes the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit
WISTERIA
The wisteria is widely regarded as quintessentially English, its glorious frou-frou lilac-blue clusters embellishing and softening the brick façades of all manner of homes around the country. Yet those draping blooms we so admire are almost always from either China or Japan.
The two main species are Wisteria floribunda, Japanese wisteria, and Wisteria sinensis (sometimes ‘chinensis’) the Chinese wisteria, whose differing qualities are well worth being aware of when it comes to choosing a plant.
Both are from the Leguminosae or pea family of deciduous climbing plants, and both from a distance could be mistaken for each other. Yet as they twine upwards, they do so in inexplicably different directions, W. floribunda heading clockwise and W. sinensis anticlockwise. Where the Japanese variety will climb to about four metres or more, its Chinese cousin is said to be capable of reaching 18 to 30m (the Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs, regarded as a plantsperson’s bible, says so).
The leaves of a wisteria can also be a tool for telling the varieties apart. All are compound, with one leaf consisting of many leaflets attached to the stem, but the Japanese plant will have between 13 and 19 leaflets, while the Chinese version has longer but fewer leaflets (between nine and 13 leaflets).
Racemes of W. floribunda tend to be slimmer and shorter, darker in colour – violet-bue or blueish-purple, and, the flowers open first at the base. At first this makes it seem as if they are less voluptuous, but once all the flowers have opened this is just as spectacular as its more vigorous Chinese counterpart. The flowers of W. sinensis are usually mauve or lilac, and don’t have the little white and yellow splash on the standards that is particularly attractive close-up in W. floribunda. And in the Chinese version, the flowers appear simultaneously but before the leaves, while the Japanese wisteria has both leaves and flowers at the same time.
Hillier has W. sinensis as perhaps the most popular type. ‘A large specimen in full flower against an old house wall is one of the wonders of May.’
Both plants bear large velvety seed pods – it’s not worth keeping them as not only will they possibly not come true, but you could also wait 20 years for your first flower. It’s best to buy a new wisteria either when it’s in flower, or making sure it is grafted (you can see the graft ‘join’ as a bulge near the bottom of the stem).
Full sun is best, but light shade is tolerated – wisteria originally grew on trees, with its roots embedded in the floor of the forest, benefiting from the leaf-mould enriched soil, so mimicking those conditions is a good idea. Wisteria tends not to have problems. However, in a garden situation keep an eye out for late frosts and perhaps protect young flowers by covering with fleece – you could try clipping it carefully onto the twining framework as high up as possible or necessary, usinn those little plastic clips used for tomato plants. It should also be noted that all parts of the plant carry a ‘do not eat’ warning. However, wisteria does enjoy a regular feed of tomato food in the flowering season every couple of weeks.
Always keep the plant well watered in summer in lighter soils if you want good flowers the following year. The other requirement for a mass of flowers is good pruning. It’s very straightforward, and one of the greatest rewards is to see the new flower buds as they start to form, pointed and perfectly shaped, blueish-green almost architectural creations.
You need to prune twice, once in August, when flowering has finished, cutting back those fast-grown whippy shoots to about six leaves. Then, the following February (some gardeners go for a July/January schedule) back to three buds and to do some final tidying up. As with the advice for getting the most fruit from your fruit trees, it’s best to train your wisteria so the side shoots and branches are horizontal for the most plentiful flowers (if they point upwards, they simply put all their energy into growing upwards!)
The various cultivars encompass a variety of other colours, with white, pinks, pinky-plums, blues and all shades of purples and lilacs. As for the name, it is generally held that the English botanist and plant collector Thomas Nuttall, who lived and worked in the US for decades, named it after a fellow Pennsylvania academic, Professor Caspar Wistar. Nuttall returned to the UK and died in Lancashire in 1859, among his namesakes the pretty Viola nuttallii, Nuttall’s violet. The name was incorrectly denoted at some point with an ‘e’ instead of an ‘a’ and the official body that approves plant names deemed ‘wisteria’ to be its accepted name under its rules.
Whatever – wisteria, wistaria... ‘when draped with a multitude of long racemes of white, pink, blue or mauve pea-flowers, there is no climber more beautiful’ according to that voice of garden authority, the Hillier manual.
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