Usually my Chinese wisteria sends out leaves and flowers at the same time. This year it was all flowers.
Chinese wisteria ‘Caroline’
After enjoying the bloom, it’s time to remove the flower stems. This saves the tree from producing seed pods and allows the new leaves to receive more light.
When most of the blooms have fallen away, I bring the tree into the workshop and start cutting.
Any guesses how many flower stems I removed?
Before clean-up
After removing the flowers, 32″
If I had guessed I’d have been way off. It turns out there were 388 racemes on the tree! Not all had fully elongated, but that’s how many cuts I made to reduce the racemes to the small leaf buds growing at the base of each stem.
Although I’ll miss the color in the garden, there’s always a chance I’ll see a few flowers in summer. In the meantime, I’ll let the tree grow freely until the leaves harden off and the tree becomes dense. At that point I’ll prune and reduce the leaves (see “Leaf pruning Chinese wisteria” for details).