Plant of the Week
Wisteria
Latin: Wisteria sinensis
I do not have a wisteria planted in my garden. This is not because I don’t
admire the beauty of this purple-flowered vine, but because it frightens me.
Knowing my slovenly ways, I fear that were I to plant one, in short order it
would take over my house, then yard and then neighborhood. As a public service,
I have refrained from the temptation.
Wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) is a fast growing, woody vine belonging
to the legume family that became an instant hit when introduced into England in
1816. It's a rampant grower, capable of engulfing trees, power poles and
anything that gets in its path It rewards us each spring with the drooping,
foot-long trusses of purple pea-flowers. It climbs by twining its vines in a
clockwise fashion around all it encounters, even poles 6-inches in diameter.
Because of a long history of xenophobia amongst Chinese rulers, only two
early trading ports were allowed in China before the Opium Wars of 1842; Canton
(now officially Guangzhou, but also spelled Kuang-chou, just to keep you on your
toes) and Macao. Chinese city names are difficult to follow because most of the
original trading was in South China where "Cantonese," the language of Canton
was spoken.
After the Communists won control of China in the 1940s, Mandarin became the
official language of all of China and city names across the country were changed
to conform to the unified language. Westerners further garbled the process by
phonetically spelling place names, further confusing the issue.
Guangzhou was used as a manufacturing and trading center by the English East
Indies Company since 1684. After the second trade mission to Beijing in 1812,
English trade with China picked up and things were hopping in Guangzhou. This
region of southeastern China remains the main area of manufacture for the
Chinese goods sold in Wal-Mart stores today.
John Reeves arrived from England in 1812, mostly working in Guangzhou which
is 90 miles inland from the more widely known port city of Hong Kong, which only
became important as a trade center after the Opium Wars. He worked as a tea
inspector for the English East Indies Company.
Reeves was a great gardener and directly or indirectly involved in getting
many of the familiar Chinese plants back to England during the twenty plus years
he lived in China. In Guangzhou, the English traders were only allowed to work
through eleven "hong" (Chinese merchants), one of whom took the anglicized name
of Consequa. It was in his garden that Reeves first saw wisteria in bloom.
Consequa was, according to Reeves’ reports, an affable individual who agreed
to propagate and sell plants of the vine he had acquired from further north in
mainland China. Apparently Consequa’s fate was not a kind one, dying destitute
as a result of deals with English and American merchants who swindled him by
taking delivery of products but never paying for them.
Wisteria, called Ziteng (Purple Vine) in Chinese, has been grown since the
fifth century in Chinese gardens and is still commonly used. It was first
written of in 1406 by the Imperial prince Zhu Xiao in his Jiuhuang Bencao
- which translates roughly as the "save-from-famine herbal." Zhu, a kind of
Euell Gibbons of his day, experimented with more than 500 garden plants and
roadside weeds as he prepared his herbal. Wisteria flowers are steamed and then
fried or used to make "wisteria cakes".
Growing wisteria is not a problem in the garden, but controlling it is. The
best usage seems to be to grow it on a strong, free-standing trellis that is
some distance from other plants upon which it might scamper. It can also be
grown on chain-link fences or as a free-standing "tree," with the vine initially
allowed to climb on a metal post.
Most of our problems with wisteria come from our timidity - our unwillingness
to prune the vine. Because it produces such a tangle of twining vines, the only
sensible time to prune it is in the winter when you can more or less see what
you are doing. Don’t let it grow for a number of years and then try to prune.
Instead, prune it some every year and try to keep ahead of its rambunctious
nature. Wintertime pruning reduces the number of blooms, but it flowers at
almost every node, so they always have plenty of blooms.
Plants grown from seed go through five to seven years of juvenility before
they flower. Cutting-grown vines usually flower in a two or three years after
planting, provided you don’t let them grow unrestrained. Pruning and keeping the
plant growth somewhat in check increases flowering.
By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist
- Ornamentals
Extension News -
April 23, 2004
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