where are you .. how was winter and spring weather ... how old is it ....any chance at a pic ...

how did you plant it if recent transplant ..... add fert??? ... when planted .. etc.. etc....

ken

It's three-year-old plant. It has grown like crazy. The year I planted it, it had buds and flowered and also turned fall-colored in the autumn. Last year, no flowers, no fall color. This year, I pruned it back (not really hard--maybe halfway) at the end of winter. I watched for signs of flowers and saw the healthy yellow buds turn brown and crumble. If the tree had flower buds last year, I didn't notice, but I think not. It has grown like crazy again this year. Our winter was not particularly unusual, no. I have not fed it.

I have several and moved them a few times because the rapid growth was much more than I expected. It is a shrub by the way.....did all the flowers turn brown ? The flowers are almost too small to see on mine. What's your climate zone?

Zone 6A. No flowers at all..unless those yellow clusters WERE the flowers. That would be embarrassing. Okay, so I went and looked up images of the flowers and maybe that was it--maybe just those insignificant yellow clusters--I swear they were more significant than that when I bought the shrub, maybe not. Yeah--it's kind of a monster. My husband would be happy if I tore it out. It was supposed to be the centerpiece of a large bed, but it's pretty much crowding everything else out.

Marie, I have two tiers about 4' x 6' surrounded by rock walls and never decided what to grow there. Somebody suggested sumac and said you could plant things like allium that come up through it. Had you ever seen sumac planted as a ground cover that allows other select plants to grow through'?

Not that I can remember. But there's no reason not to give it try. I'd plant the allium or grow through plant first, then the sumac. The sumac, once established, would distract from that ugly allium foliage.

I would not be able to dig down the 6 -8 inches needed for the allium bulb. I was lucky I could hack out the depth needed for the young sumac.

Thanks for the advice. I'm not one who likes general ground covers like sumac, but I respect the person who recommended it so I'm trying to open up my mind.

I'm planting this on a sort of loose, rocky, retaining wall that, when we bought this house last summer, had been neglected and overgrown with vines and invasives. It faces away from our house. The sumac has a high value to wildflfe and will choke out whatever else tries to grow there. Don't care so much about the flowering which, from what I've read, is really not a feature of the plant. Thinking this will be a perfect use for it. :)