Smoke trees have their "smoky" appearance after bloom. The flowers are small
and fairly inconspicuous, but as they fall off billowy hairs appear on the
spent flower clusters giving the trees their "smoke". You can prune around
the smoky growth, and shape as needed, but keep in mind that they are
beautiful both in summer with the hazy, smoky spent blossoms, and again in
the fall with beautiful fall foliage. Severe pruning could limit your
enjoyment of both, but shaping is fine. Amsonia is another plant grown for its showy fall
foliage. It does produce a small blue flower in the spring, and has
outstanding yellow fall foliage--often its best attribute, since spring
blooms may be small. If pruning was needed, it should have been done as soon
as spring bloom had finished. This herbaceous perennial dies back to the
ground after a frost, so to keep it full and bushy during the growing
season, prune immediately after bloom. Pruning now would serve very little
purpose. We are getting into the hottest times of the year, so new growth
would be limited, and you would end up having less fall foliage, so I would
leave this plant alone for now.
(August) How much and when may I prune Smoke Trees and Arkansas Blue Amsonia? Both are really
leggy and the Smoke Tree (Bush?) is growing fine except for one long center
spike. Kind of ugly on an otherwise pretty plant.