Scott Roberts wrote:
Hello, all.

Can someone please post on the site, or inform
me of the difference between the flower and
leaf buds on a Wisteria chinensis. I believe
my Wist. is old enough to produce, yet it just
leafs out and dissapoints every year. Could
it be that I currently live in U.S. zone 10?



I assume you mean W. sinensis, Chinese wisteria, since there
is no W. chinensis. Anyway, zone 10 is pretty warm for it.
Dirr says zone 8 is as warm as it likes, although
Botanica, whose zone limits are MUCH more liberal than Dirr,
allows that it will grow in Z 10. In many cases, Botanica's
zones are too liberal, IMHO, and I think zone 10 is
certainly at its southernmost limit, if not beyond it. But,
there are many versions of zone 10, and if your humidity is
high it may do OK.

Anyway, wisteria do not like to flower in pots, and as Kevin
says there are a number of "tricks" alleged to make them
bloom. In MY experience, your tree needs to have been grown
from a layering of an adult plant or a cutting and in a pot
at least 8 years before you can even start thinking about
the possibility of a bloom. If grown from seed, 10 years is
the absolute soonest for blooms and 15 are more likely.
Also in my experience, the best hope for blooming is low N
fertilizer most of the year (it is OK AFTER a bloom for a
while) and keeping the pot about 1/3 to 1/2 submerged in
water during the hot part of the year.

Quite soon after they appear, flower buds swell to a round
shape and color begins to show through them -- first a rusty
red, then the color of the flowers to be.

Good luck.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Nature
encourages no looseness, pardons no errors. Ralph Waldo Emerson

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