Parking lot wisteria

[rockm]

If you're in the mid-Atlantic states and want a wisteria, don't go to the nursery for one. Look around. They're everywhere around here and the trunks you can get will outshine anything you can buy and develop. These are in a weedy, sketchy part of a parking garage near me. All the tall lanky twisty trunks in the pic are wisteria. [

 

[rockm]

 

[discusmike]

I've never noticed any around my way,I could just be walking past n not seeing.

 

[rockm]

Once you know what they look like, you will literally see them everywhere. Best spotted in the spring in woodlands from the obvious blue flowers, which can cover entire patches of woodlots. Usually bloom in mid-April into May.

And no, I don't usually hang out in weedy sketchy parking garages ;-). On my way through there to get lunch across the street...

 

[M. Frary]

Wisteria Hysteria?

 

[Vin]

Cool Wisty but what is this? It looks kind of interesting.

 

[rockm]

I think that is a big sweetgum, about two feet across and mostly uncollectable without a backhoe

 

[drew33998]

Wisteria aren't the easiest to collect. They send out super long tap roots and usually have little or no feeder roots close to the base. With all the other trees in that immediate area I would think that chances of a successful collecting would be slim. At least that is my experience with them. Any one have anything different to add?

 

[Cadillactaste]

I would still get permission to remove anything collected.

 

[JoeR]

Based on their rapid growth I bet you could airlayer them pretty easily no matter the trunk size.

 

[rockm]

Wisteria aren't the easiest to collect. They send out super long tap roots and usually have little or no feeder roots close to the base. With all the other trees in that immediate area I would think that chances of a successful collecting would be slim. At least that is my experience with them. Any one have anything different to add?

I've collected a dozen or so, ranging from 3 to 12 inches in diameter, over the years. They are among the easier plants to collect, given the right time of year. Collecting these would be a breeze. All of theses trunks move very easily when you push on the trunks, same for just about all the bigger wisteria I've dug over the years. Wisteria don't send roots deep into the soil. I've rarely found they go down more than a foot. They tend to push root run just under the soil surface in the duff and leaves.

Wisteria don't really have tap roots. They root in all kinds of ways, depends on the site. A five inch long piece of vine hacked off a parent vine if left in the same moist spot where it fell will push dozens of roots and begin growing in a couple of weeks in warmer weather.

Collection of larger vine trunks usually entails simply sawing around the trunk a foot or so out from the main trunk (after flowering in May or so). Lifting and severing attaching roots underneath. Plunking the root mass into soil (not bonsai soil) and keeping it on the moist side. New growth usually appears by mid-late June.

however, over the years, I have noticed that larger trunks CAN begin to die back over time, as they adapt to containers. This usually is related to the amount of root that gets collected with them. I try to save as many larger roots as I can (even if they're six feet long). I try to coil them up in the container underneath the trunk. This can help a bit.

 

[rockm]

Wisteria wood and roots can take being split longitudinally (along the length) with little affect on growth. That means you can split roots to make them easier to coil up. Same goes for older shoots on the top. Using a trunk splitter, you can separate a major branch/shoot into two or three sections. Wrap those sections up with raffia, wire them, drastically move them and have them survive with little or no issue. Severe bending up and down or across with no splitting, however, can result in a break across a branch. That can kill or severly weaken a branch.

 

[BRITEart]

Hey there rock, it sounds like you may be just the guy I need to talk to! Im guessing from your display of knowledge on the matter (wisteria) that when you break the bad news to me I can rest assured that im actually hearing it from someone who knows what he is talking about.

You see I have a wisteria that has some sentimental value of sorts ...my father started it about 15 years ago. He planted in the middle of the yard and started training it to grow as a tree. he went through a divorce and lost the house. but not until he had grown quite an impressive specimen. It was around 6' tall and had a trunk base of about 14". I had just recenty started bonsai and he told me to collect it. The tree did great for the first year.... then I had to winter it at my mothers and it would have been fine except my mother moved it right up against the house and a valley on the roof drained right into it all winter long... I was worried at first but in spring it leafed out healthy an vigorous. long story short I started loosing branches with no explanation...by the time fall got here I was down to 2 branches. I repoted this spring and I was devistated to find that not only were those 2 branches dead but they were rotted through along with most of my trunk and root mass. Then to make matters worse while i was scraping off the dead tissue to see if anything yet lived I found bunches of little white worms...im rather new to bonsai so I just kind of winged it.....I removed all soft tissue... aplied pesticides heavily for three days straight....then applied wood hardener and cut paste around the bark I thought was still living I tied it in its new training box really well and filled it up to where my dead wood started with diatamatious earth and filled it the rest of the way up with overly large shale pieces (I think) in an attempt to keep it dry.
The tree only saw fit to bless me with 2 buds close together. One of them turned out to be very vigorous. Fortunatly what ever broke one of them left the good one...since then I have carved the deadwood and found the wood to be holding up very well I have really socked the wood hardener to this thing. So I know that was a long drawn out story for a dieing tree.. -but ..... I just need to know.... am I wasteing my time watering this thing or does it have a chance?

 

[mcpesq817]

Collected wisteria are prone to this. I collected a very large wisteria that had been growing in my parent's yard for a good 25+ years. It had a double helix spiral trunk, but the year after collection, one of the trunks died and completely rotted out to the point that I just pulled the trunk and it separated from the other. What I did was try to get it to grow as strongly as possible to help stop the rot, and used wood hardener as well. Now a few years after collection, the trunk seems to have finally stabilized and is not rotting anymore.

Long story short, your experience isn't unique as this is typical when they are collected.

 

[rockm]

mcpesq817 is correct about this. Generally, I've found that if collected all in one go, larger wisteria trunks tend to die back for a few years. If you look at some of the large wisteria in Japanese collections, you can see evidence of trunk die back, sometimes significantly so. I chalk it up to the obvious abrupt loss of about 80-95 percent of the root mass at collection. Usually with larger trunk, like over 6 inches or so, it's best to try to collect them over a period of two seasons, using the classic 'chop one side" of the roots one year, then the other the next at collection, or leave it for another to regenerate some closer in feeder roots.

The good news is the die back will usually stop about three years in after collection if you just let the plant grow without much (if any) pruning. Let it go wild and grow as much as possible. With wisteria, it's all about roots. The more the better. Lots of top growth will produce stronger root growth. In time, if you let the plant grow the damage can actually be filled in or callused over (depending, of course on how much area is left).

FWIW, wood hardener is a nice thing to do, but wisteria wood is not very durable even with no problems. It rots VERY easily in most conditions. Trying to save it can be kind of frustrating. this is especially true with wisteria that has grown big over a short period, like your plant. That wood is not very dense and tends to soak up water and stay damp then get spongy and then rots away.

 

[rockm]

This is a HUGE wisteria in the Japanese Collection at the National Arboretum. It features a "weathered" trunk that, at one time, rotted away significantly. It has since regrown over most of that damage. I would suspect the original damage came from it's collection, or from damaged wood while in the ground. At any rate, this kind of thing can be worked into the final design of the tree. With yours, it looks like you've still got some pretty decent growth from one side of the trunk. I'd just let that go for a few years and get established and put on more wood to compensate what you've already lost and what you will lose on the other side.

Use wood hardener if you like, but lime sulphur will probably be a better choice for its antibacterial and antifungal properties. With wood hardener you get none of that and FWIW, water will soak into the wood BEHIND the hardener and rot from the inside, leaving a shell of treated wood that will collapse in time--had this happen with a huge wild rose vine I had a while back, and that plant produced denser wood than wisteria...

 

[mcpesq817]

On mine, I scraped out the punky wood and treated the rotted area with lime sulfur darkened with some india ink. Then I added some Minwax wood hardener. The nice thing is that it didn't turn out with that plastic-looking wood hardener look.