I wonder if the newer cousins are the same way or not?

Those marketer's -got me-

I am planting the cousins just to see what the futz is all about. LL Prime & Little Punch

Love limelight and just really dislike how they get so floppy. Most of the time after a rain they are ruined, but that could be just me.

Comes with the territory of large wethead and long stems.

Growing LL Prime and Little Lime Punch to compare. Going to need a few years for a fair comparison. In my very brief observation on seeing LL Prime on the shelf, the stems are really stiff on this.

Yes, post about that later or even include pics as the PW pics of Lime Punch are quite ugly for me and I hope it is because they tweaked the colors badly and the blooms are really not that bad.

With the marketing-esque pics posted, I stil prefer the OG LL variant's. The red's don't do it for me in panicle.

Just wanted to see how the stems behave relative to bloom.

I recall walking by it in the previous year and I was like Whoa, these fresh stems are like bamboo sticks

Sofar, LL Punch is leafed out from top to bottom along last years wood.

LL Prime is slow to start. Just leafout on the terminal end and it's still slowly getting there

@a1an Why do you want to get rid of Limelight? I am thinking of planting two next spring.

The one I removed was mainly as I have no more space for new shrubs and bough new ones to test. So out came one in order for the new one to take it's place.

The newer variants (Lime light prime - smaller than the OG LL) and Little Lime Punch supposedly have stiffer-stronger stems. It's too early to tell - might know more in ike 4 years from now. These are the test ones.

I have a Limelight in one area that is a small edge and 3 Limelight Trees. They just -glow- at night and fairly maintence free. If you're growing a tree form, use a metal stake for at least 4 years - till it's fairly well rooted. IME, wood is just not stroung enough of a stake for a really topheavy wide LL tree. One of my 3, even though I have used 3 stakes and tiedowns from young planting till it was well rooted (can topple over and uproot if too many blooms, and a noreaster windy day). Even though I had it staked well, when in bare wood format in winter (you can see the trunk has like a 15% lean) and it's mainly due to the entire mass of bloom heads-weight just growing in the direction of the sun and putting the weight too -forward-.