Hmm.... It looks like either there is little interest in these fascinating plants - or you're bored by more wisteria pictures from me! :-) I was hoping someone else with a Chinese wisteria - or someone who has seen one flowering in their neighbourhood - might chime in regarding their experience with summer flowers on them.... Wisterias are certainly a bit of work re pruning and such, but they are beautiful and fascinating plants. We are still learning things about them after having them in the garden for almost 20 years. The summer flowers still involve a bit of mystery for us. Some years we get a lot and some years not very many even though we prune the new growth - which seems to provoke the flowers - every year. Not all pruning of new growth generates flowers, so we're not sure why sometimes it happens but not other times. Summers after a bad winter that killed a lot of flowerbuds seem to result in more summer flowers - which seems logical if the vine is trying to replace lost flowering wood. The summer flowers also look a bit different than the spring flowers but it's hard to precisely define the difference :-) I think the spring flower racemes have the florets packed more densely while the summer racemes seem to have the florets spaced further apart. I looked through pictures of ours over various years, trying to 'see' the difference:

- We cut back some growth this morning that was extending beyond its allowed space, and harvested a couple of the summer flowers for a vase. (Nice fragrance to go with breakfast this morning!) You can see that the florets seem to be spaced well apart:

This picture is from a couple of years ago, showing a summer bloom on the tree:

And this is a picture of a cluster of spring flowers from a few years ago:

When you look at the spring picture, it looks like the florets aren't all that much further apart than the summer ones in the picture of them on the tree. Perhaps the difference is that they open more quickly along the raceme in spring....? One of the things about wisteria that attract me is that they raise lots of questions to think about :-) There is not a great deal of reliable, detailed information on them that is readily available. I think their long-time-to-flowering-age makes them less attractive as a research subject!

And I just noticed in the spring picture above that the florets seem to be growing in a spiral! Logical perhaps because of the vine's twining growth habit, but I had never noticed that effect on the flowers before just now!

Anyone else out there fascinated with these plants....?

Ah Woody - my magnolia has also produced a second flush. I wondered if it felt it was near death so rushed into flowering (seeding) but woodies generally drop leaves (you should see my wood) or worse, entire limbs).

I love wisteria...just never had room.

Camp. - There’s a beautiful magnolia in our neighbourhood that usually produces a few late summer blooms. This year it is doing its biggest late summer bloom ever! I should try to get a picture of it.... The house where it it grows is about to be torn down! There’s a tree-protection fence around the magnolia. We all hope the tree survives the construction! Last year there was a viburnum in the neighbourhood that did a late summer bloom, which it had never done before. I’m keeping an eye on that one too to see if it does it again.... Odd growing conditions these days...!

We don’t have enough room here to let wisterias get really big, so that is partly why we keep our two pruned to be small ‘trees’. The pruning helps with developing lots of flowering wood. The Japanese one has never produced summer flowers like the Chinese one does though.

Camp. - when we walked the dog this morning, I took some pictures of the nice magnolia nearby that is reblooming now:

And here's a picture I took in May when it was doing its usual spring bloom - so the summer bloom is sparse, but nice to see!

If your seedling is doing a rebloom now, that probably bodes well for future shows from it!

This morning some of the wisteria blooms were looking more like their spring version - and they were pumping out lots of scent. Walking across the front porch, the wisteria scent was lovely.... Odd situation, but I'll take it....! :-)

My wisteria rebloomed one year but I seem to remember it was later in the season. I was thrilled. I hope it happens again.

skibby - post pictures of yours please....?