I have a friend who lost a cherished front-yard tree.\u00a0 After the tree surgeons removed the remains, he began the hunt for a new one.\u00a0 The choices were endless.\u00a0 His lot is large and could accommodate a sizeable specimen.\u00a0 The old tree was deciduous, rather than evergreen; as a fan of autumn color, he wanted the replacement to be deciduous as well.\u00a0 After paging through books and catalogs and walking around his neighborhood in search of arboreal magnificence, he fixated on the katsura, or Cercidiphyllum japonicum, a tree that was uncommon in his area.\u00a0 That was fifteen years ago.\u00a0 He still hasn\u2019t picked a tree, but his efforts piqued my interest in the noble and ancient species.<\/p>\n
You may have seen a katsura and mistaken it for a North American redbud.\u00a0 The rounded leaves are close in appearance to the round or heart-shaped leaves of redbuds, a fact \u00a0that gave rise to katsura\u2019s Latin name.\u00a0 \u201cCercis\u201d is the botanical name for the redbud genus. \u00a0\u201cCercidiphyllyum\u201d means, literally, \u201cleaves like redbud.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The two trees inhabit identical USDA hardiness ranges and feature rounded crowns, but the resemblance pretty much stops there.\u00a0 Katsuras are larger trees, topping out at between 40 to 60 feet, with a 25 to 50 foot spread.\u00a0 The smaller North American redbud grows only 20 to 30 feet tall, with a 25 to 35 foot spread.\u00a0 Both produce flowers before leafing out in the spring, but katsura flowers\u2014male and female\u2014are spidery looking, with the female flowers resembling slightly skinnier spiders.\u00a0 Redbud flowers, by contrast, are small, pea-like blooms that clothe the naked spring branches in shades of purplish pink.\u00a0 You won\u2019t see pollinators on a katsura.\u00a0 The wind takes care of the job.\u00a0 Redbuds, on the other hand, are pollinated by hungry bees.<\/p>\n
While redbud\u2019s glory is the flowers, katsura\u2019s are renowned for magnificent leaves, which emerge in the spring in a shade of red-purple.\u00a0 Over the course of spring and early summer, they gradually change to blue-green.\u00a0 When early fall rolls around, the foliage metamorphoses into shades of red, apricot and yellow.\u00a0 Even if you can\u2019t see a katsura tree in the fall, you will be able to smell the leaves, which give off an intoxicating burnt-sugar or cotton candy fragrance.\u00a0 This is an attractive trait, especially when you compare the foliage scent to that of the more popular gingko, whose fallen leaves ripen into stinky mush.<\/p>\n
As the species name, \u201cjaponicum\u201d suggests, katsura is native to Japan, as well as China.\u00a0 The species was first described by Philipp Franz von Siebold, a nineteenth century physician and scientist.\u00a0 Siebold traveled to Japan, made studies of Japanese plants and animals and was co-author of a groundbreaking comprehensive work, Flora Japonica, <\/i>along with his frequent collaborator, German botanist Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini.<\/p>\n
Katsura arrived in the United States in due course and is included in the collections of many arboreta.\u00a0 However, it does not seem to have caught on like the redbud or gingko.\u00a0 Horticultural fashion is sometimes truly mystifying.<\/p>\n
Now katsura may be ready for its moment in the sun\u2014literally and figuratively.\u00a0 Years ago Dan Hinkley, then of Heronswood Nursery in Washington State, bred a more compact version, \u2018Heronswood Globe,\u2019 with all the desirable traits of the species, but a manageable size of 15 to 20 feet tall.\u00a0 Hinkley mentioned it in a magazine piece not long ago.\u00a0 Dutch breeders have also come up with two standard-size varieties, \u2018Raspberry\u2019 and \u2018Strawberry,\u2019 noted for fall color that is more deep red than yellow.\u00a0 Not to be outdone, the Germans bred their own standard katsura, \u2018Rotfuchs,\u2019 sold here as Red Fox.\u00a0 This tree features new growth that is more red than purple and has the same sweet autumn smell as all the other katsuras.<\/p>\n
Lovers of weeping tree forms may be interested in \u2018Pendulum,\u2019 a weeping katsura that grows only 15 to 25 feet tall, with fragrant yellow fall foliage.<\/p>\n
If you decide to invest in a katsura, know that it is a sun-loving, but thirsty plant with a shallow root system.\u00a0 Katsuras are in hog heaven when planted in spots that feature moisture-retentive clay soil or are relatively damp.\u00a0 If your property is not home to such a site, use drip irrigation to provide plenty of supplemental water, especially when the tree is young.\u00a0 Mulch by applying a 3-inch layer of organic material in a doughnut shape that covers the 2 by 2 foot area around the trunk.\u00a0 Don\u2019t allow the mulch to touch the bark, as that promotes rot and disease.<\/p>\n
My friend will someday find a tree and I hope it will be a katsura.\u00a0 He will certainly be the first in his neighborhood to have one.\u00a0 If you want to start a similar trend in your neighborhood, find a young katsura at ForestFarm, 990 Tetherow Road, Williams, OR 97544, (541) 846-7269, http:\/\/www.forestfarm.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Free catalog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have a friend who lost a cherished front-yard tree.\u00a0 After the tree surgeons removed the remains, he began the hunt for a new one.\u00a0 The choices were endless.\u00a0 His lot is large and could accommodate a sizeable specimen.\u00a0 The old tree was deciduous, rather than evergreen; as a fan of autumn color, he wanted … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,1],"tags":[1029,1028,957,1030,1024,1026,1027,1025],"class_list":["post-1213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-uncategorized","tag-cercidiphyllym-japonicum","tag-cercis","tag-fall-color","tag-japanese-trees","tag-katsura-tree","tag-landscape-trees","tag-redbud","tag-street-trees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1214,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions\/1214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}