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Plant of the Week
Laland Pyracantha, Firethorn
Latin: Pyracantha coccine a var. lalandei
Gardens have trends, fads and fashions just like every other part of our
society. When I started working 25 plus years ago there seemed to be an
unwritten code that every landscape in Arkansas required at least one pyracantha
planted next to a blank wall where it was trained in the espalier
fashion.
Today you still see the concrete nails where many of these original plants were
trained but fashions have changed and the garden world has moved on to other
more interesting and exciting novelties.
Pyracantha is a large, evergreen woody shrub of the rose family that is closely
allied to the hawthorns and cotoneasters, yet distinctly different from them.
The original pyracantha plants made their way from southern Europe to England
about 1600 where they were grown as hedges and occasionally as small trees.
This species can become tree-like, often 15 feet tall and wide, but it doesn’t
like being as a tree -- it wants to be a bush when it grows up.
In the spring, masses of dirty white flowers are produced in dense terminal
clusters. But the main reason for growing pyracantha is not its flowers, but its
drooping masses of quarter-inch, orange-red berries that ripen in the fall and
persist all winter.
The Laland pyracantha was grown from seed by a French nurseryman named M.
Lalande in 1874. It produces more fruit than the normal type and has been the
most commonly grown form during most of the last century. Donald Egolf, the
former breeder at the U.S. National Arboretum, worked with pyracantha and
developed an upright growing selection called "Mohave" which has become common
in the trade today.
The name "pyracantha" is from Greek "pyr" meaning fire and "acanthos" meaning
thorn, hence its common name. Pyracantha has inchlong thorns nestled amongst the
leaves that gives a burning sensation when punctured that feels oh-so-good when
the pain stops. Apparently the plant exudes some type of salt from a gland on
the thorn that imparts the burning sensation.
The habit of training firethorns to walls is an 18th Century innovation that
first appeared in England and spread to this country soon thereafter. The use of
espalier training is an old garden style coming from Italy where fruits
and vines were trained against walls. Apparently the pyracantha was the first
ornamental to be grown in this fashion.
Pyracanthas are not for the lazy gardener. If they are to be espaliered
to a wall, they take fairly detailed pruning several times a year to keep the
robust plants in bounds.
While most of the common selections are hardy throughout Arkansas and they
tolerate our heat and dry summers well, they are not without their problems. The
most serious problem of pyracanthas is the disease fireblight that kills the
plants back from the tips.
A fruit disease, pyracantha scab, can be easily controlled by planting resistant
selections such as Mohave. The hawthorn lacebug also can attack the plant and
make its foliage unsightly. Because the plant is so vigorous these problems
seldom kill the plant, but they can make it unsightly enough to speed its
removal.
By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist
- Ornamentals
Extension News -
September 10, 1999
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