Why You Won’t Get A Wisteria Tree from Seed

How do you start a wisteria tree from seed (which I already have but don’t want to start it until I know what to do). Please also include starting wisteria vines.
Thank you, and look forward to your news letters.
Charlie

Doug says

Wisteria seed isn’t hard to start. It doesn’t require any special treatment.

However! An important point at the bottom about wisteria trees and wisteria tree seed.

 

How To Start Your Own Wisteria Seed

With fresh wisteria seed you have two options.

Option One

  • Simply sow it outdoors in a protected spot (where you can keep it weeded) and it will germinate the following spring.
  • Grow all summer in this spot and move to final spot in fall when they go dormant.
  • Some will germinate right away depending on how fresh it really is and how much each seed wants to live) 🙂 Allow these eager seedlings to overwinter in place and transplant in spring before growth starts.

Option Two

  • Store seed cool and dry until 12-16 weeks before you want to plant it outdoors.
  • Sow seed indoors in pots 12-16 weeks before outside planting date (barely cover the seed) and give it 70F soil temperatures.
  • You can transplant the tender seedlings when they have at least 4 true leaves, after all danger of frost to their growing spot.

What About Old Seed

  • Soak them in warm water for 24 hours before sowing.
  • Then sow in pots or outdoors as above when you want it to germinate.
  • Again, barely cover the seed.
  • Overwintered seed will benefit from this treatment.

Why You Can’t Start A Wisteria Tree From Seed

The seed you’re getting from a wisteria tree is really a wisteria vine.

You have to take a vine and graft it to the specified tree trunk and this (unfortunately) isn’t something beginner gardeners are going to do.

Wisteria trees are grafted trees. This means a wisteria vine is grafted on top of a tree trunk.

So unless you know how to graft that vine onto an appropriate tree seedling, buy your wisteria trees from a nursery.

Do This Simple Thing To Enjoy Fragrant Wisteria Blooms

Let’s grow some Wisteria.

To begin with, this vine is found in two basic species in garden shops.

Two Species

They are W. floribunda or Japanese Wisteria and W. sinensis or Chinese Wisteria

Weed Alert!

For gardeners south of zone 7, this plant – particularly W. floribunda – is a noxious weed able to strangle unsuspecting trees at a single bound.

Mind you, it is a pretty noxious weed but still it grows quite rampantly in the warmer parts of the continent.

Those of us in colder areas can only wish.

Hardiness of Wisteria

Wisteria floribunda is the most cold tolerant, growing up into USDA zone 4 (C5) and is differentiated easily from the more tender Wisteria sinensis(USDA 5/6) because it twines around branches clockwise while W. sinensis winds itself counter-clockwise.

I grew Wisteria floribunda at my USDA zone 4 nursery garden for about 6 years before a particularly vicious winter (lots of -40F days) killed it.

W. floribunda is deliciously sweetly scented (more so than W. sinensis) and once you have it blooming, you’ll never want to be without it.

Attractive Colours

You’ll be able to find attractive colours in both Wisteria species.

How To Grow

Think of these plants as woodland edge plants. They like a semi-shaded area with full afternoon sun or even full sun. They do not like shady areas and will seldom bloom there.

By the way, here’s why you won’t ever get a Wisteria tree from seed.

Want Best Soil

They do want the best soil you can give them.

Again, think woodland edge with lots of leaf mold, a good supply of moisture, deep soil and no clay to hold the winter wetness. Give this plant your best soil or make it your best. There is little point in trying to grow it on poor soil.

Don’t Use Much Nitrogen When Feeding

Use very little nitrogen. N promotes the excessive growth of leaves rather quickly with this plant and if you’ve been feeding with one of the liquid fertilizer products, you’ve been too nice to this plant.

Several shovels of compost in the spring should suffice but if you’re really concerned and need to feed something, you can add some rock phosphate or liquid fertilizer with a ratio something like 0-15-5 or 0-15-15.

As long as the first number is 0, the second number can be higher or equal to the third.

How To Propagate Wisteria

Note – treat wisteria seed as a perennial seed for germination.

Or you can take tender tip cuttings.

Propagation tips are here

Plant Selection

You’ll get better plants if you pick named varieties rather than seedling material.

The seedlings are cheaper but do plan on looking for one of the more interesting and intense colours.

Assuming this plant is in the garden and not in some wooded area, the objective is to get it to bloom and  I can safely say it is all in the pruning. It is not about whether the wisteria is a named variety or seedling, it is all about how you treat the plant. If you let any wisteria grow willy-nilly and feed it, it will take its time getting top bloom because it is busy producing leaves.

It will bloom in this unpruned state when it is good and ready to do so and then it will bloom reliably year after year.

And fragrant too!

But If You Want Faster Blooms -Prune Your Wisteria

Pruning is fairly straightforward. Identify the main leader.

  • From the main leader, there will be offshoots or laterals. These laterals can either be pruned back hard to 3 or 4 main buds to keep the vine in check on a regularly sized trellis.
  • Or, the laterals can be allowed to grow out for five or six feet before being tipped and stopped from growing.

These laterals will now throw shoots of their own in subsequent years.

In the larger version, it is the shoots produced by these laterals that are then pruned back hard to 3 or 4 buds. It is this hard pruning back that will produce flower buds on the growth and you’ll be able to quickly see the difference in the dormant wood between a small vine bud and a bigger flower bud.

Every year, you’ll have to prune back the shoots to 3 or 4 buds if you want to see flowers the next year.

If You Don’t Prune

But bottom line, if you don’t prune, Wisteria will take its own sweet time producing a flower. If you want fast flowers, you have to prune.

The good news about this plant is that it is really tough to kill by poor pruning. Winter might get it, a cold winter will “burn off” the flower buds but it will outgrow poor pruning. So go right to growing Wisteria.

You can read other posts about growing vines here

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