{"id":291,"date":"2012-02-13T04:53:18","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T12:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=291"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:33","slug":"redbud-explosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/redbud-explosion\/","title":{"rendered":"Redbud Explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"

REDBUD EXPLOSION<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With all the noise about European debt, American presidential elections and the international plague of reality television, you may not have noticed that we are in the midst of a redbud explosion.\u00a0 Breeders have taken the common Eastern Redbud–Cercis canadensis–and dressed it in flashy foliage, changed its growth habit and adorned it with lighter or darker blossoms.\u00a0 Catalogs offer an array of redbud options.\u00a0 If the trend continues, there will soon be enough redbud varieties to rival the current avalanche of heucheras, tiarellas and heucherellas.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the beginning there was the species, a wonderful, small native tree belonging to the bean or Fabaceae family.\u00a0 This family relationship is most obvious in the fruits, which come in cases that look like bean or peapods.\u00a0 Mature redbuds grow twenty to thirty feet tall, with a nearly equal spread and a rounded crown.\u00a0 The trunks tend to divide relatively close to the ground, which, I can say from youthful experience, make them great climbing trees.\u00a0 The leaves are heart-shaped and glossy green, while the tiny pink to purple-pink, pea-like flowers will sweep you off your feet.\u00a0 Closely clustered on the stems and trunks, they appear by the thousands in early to mid spring, before the leaves make their seasonal debut.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Traveling through Virginia last spring I saw scores of redbuds blooming in wooded areas, something I don’t see as much in the northeast, though the trees are hardy over a wide range, from USDA Zones 4-9.\u00a0 The flowering trees are showy for a couple of weeks in the spring before fading gracefully into the background.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But in this day and age, when people and plants must multi-task, breeders have added to the tree’s traditional virtues.\u00a0 I opened a catalog the other day to see a multi-colored flash bright enough to trigger a migraine.\u00a0 It was Cercis canadensis ‘The Rising Sun.’ \u00a0Catalog photos are sometimes enhanced and\u00a0 always taken under optimal conditions, so I take them with a large grain of salt, but the copy told an enticing story.\u00a0 ‘Rising Sun’ boasts flowers in the normal purple-pink colors, but the foliage bursts to life in shades of green, apricot, and peach.\u00a0 This color scheme is a seasonal flash in the pan, as the leaves fade to yellow and finally to summery green garb.\u00a0 Eventually the flair returns in fall and the leaves color up again in orangey-gold, before leaving the scene.\u00a0 The tree is relatively small and grows only about twelve feet tall.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ‘Forest Pansy’ is a redbud cultivar that has been around for awhile.\u00a0 Its bronze-purple new foliage is eye-catching enough to inspire hyperbole from the University of Georgia’s woody plant guru, Dr. Michael Dirr.\u00a0 In his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, <\/em>Dirr writes that the variety’s young foliage is “a screaming, shimmering red-purple.”\u009d\u00a0 Seasonal change dials this color back a bit, but its leaves remain in the purple realm.\u00a0 A little controlled hanky-panky at North Carolina State University between ‘Forest Pansy’ and ‘Covey,’ a weeping variety, resulted in the birth of ‘Ruby Falls.’\u00a0 This is a dwarf, growing only six to eight feet tall.\u00a0 It has the weeping habit of ‘Covey’ and the purple foliage of ‘Forest Pansy.’\u00a0 The leaves turn green in the summer.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ‘Forest Pansy,’ apparently amenable to all kinds of hook-ups, also begat ‘Merlot.’\u00a0 ‘Merlot’s other parent was Cercis reniformis ‘Texas White,’ which, not surprisingly, is a white-flowered tree.\u00a0 The advantage to the twelve to fifteen foot ‘Merlot’ is that its purple foliage stays purple all season instead of reverting to green.\u00a0 ‘Merlot’ has the usual rosy-tinged blooms, but another Cercis canadensis variety, ‘Royal White’ has large white blossoms.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For those who like variegated foliage, there is ‘Silver Cloud’ which has white blotches and splotches on most leaves.\u00a0 Dirr notes that some leaves invariably revert to plain green and mentions that the flowers may be less numerous on this variety.\u00a0 ‘Floating Clouds,’ which may well be a ‘Silver Cloud’ offspring, has more reliable variegation.\u00a0 ‘Silver Cloud’ and ‘Covey’ got together and became the parents of ‘Whitewater’, a spanking new weeping, redbud with somewhat fleeting variegation.\u00a0 Liberally splashed with white in spring, the leaves turn green as summer progresses.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Chartreuse or yellow-green foliage has been fashionable for some time, and the fashion-forward redbuds have not been left behind.\u00a0 ‘Hearts of Gold’ grows about fifteen feet tall and eighteen feet wide, sporting the usual rosy flowers and heart-shaped golden green leaves.\u00a0 Its proponents claim that it has the vigor of regular green-leafed varieties, plus a rapid growth habit.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Redbuds make excellent specimen trees and some forms can also be used as hedges.\u00a0 If you like sturdy, decorative, reliable trees or simply have an unquenchable desire to be a la mode in the arboreal realm, purchase one from Forestfarm, 990 Tetherow Road; Williams, OR, 97544; (541) 846-7269; <\/font><\/font>www.forestfarm.com<\/font><\/a>. Catalog $5.00.\u00a0 Another great source is Rare Find Nursery; 957 Patterson Road, Jackson, NJ 08527; (732) 833-0613; <\/font>www.rarefindnursery.com<\/font><\/a>. Paper catalog $3.00.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

REDBUD EXPLOSION \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With all the noise about European debt, American presidential elections and the international plague of reality television, you may not have noticed that we are in the midst of a redbud explosion.\u00a0 Breeders have taken the common Eastern Redbud–Cercis canadensis–and dressed it in flashy foliage, changed its growth habit and adorned it … 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":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","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=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1500,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/1500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}