On 24/08/2017 10:01, Nick Maclaren wrote:
In article ,
Jeff Layman wrote:

There is no chance of cold in the UK (even in north Scotland) killing a
Wisteria. It is much more likely that something else killed it. One
possibility is graft failure (which I grant may be exacerbated by
frost), but even so if you leave the "dead" wisteria in the soil you
will find that after a year shoots start appearing from the rootstock.
Unfortunately they will be of no use for ornamental purposes!

Yes, in the strict sense. But the way that frost kills many plants
in the UK is by damaging the tissues and giving fungi an opening
while it is above freezing but too dark and cold for the plant to
start growing. It's really our wet, dark but not frozen winters
that are the problem. I'll bet on something like that.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Wisteria is properly hardy and will go down to extremely low
temperatures, well below anything we can get in the UK, the reason for
growing them in protected places such as south and west walls is that
while the actual plant is hardy the flower buds are not and emerge to
early in the UK to be free of all risk of frost damage in the open. The
RHS reported many (in the thousands) of Wisteria dying during those cold
winters, put down to primarily "Graft Failure" caused mainly by the lack
of hand eye skills of many of the grafters! it only takes a small gap
which water can get in for frost to push the two parts apart (I was
surprised as I would have thought deep planting would over come this) In
my view Wisteria are much better off on their own roots and I only do
them from cuttings

--
Charlie Pridham
Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk