AFTER MY MOTHER passed away, I lugged home a big wooden container planted with a crape myrtle that she raised on the patio of her small retirement condo in Virginia Beach. I managed to get it up on my front porch with help from the neighbors, but I had no great expectations for her pot-bound tree.
When luscious big white flowers covered it the next summer, I was surprised and pleased that I had gone to the trouble of hanging on to this living reminder of my mother. That was more than two decades ago.
After a few years the tree burst from its big wooden pot, and I transplanted it to the yard, where it kept on stretching for the sky. Liberated, Mom's crape myrtle must be 30 feet tall now, and it's still growing and blooming every summer.
When my mother purchased her plant, no one really cared that it was too big a variety for a pot. Pruning crape myrtles every year was what all good gardeners did.
Back then, almost everybody who owned a crape myrtle hacked its branches back to the main trunk. Pruning crape myrtles into forlorn stubs may have been good form then, but no more.
Now it's known as "crape murder."
Bonnie Appleton agrees. Appleton is a Virginia Tech professor of horticulture at Hampton Roads Agricultural Research & Extension Center on Diamond Springs Road in Virginia Beach. She's been on a crusade to see that crape myrtles are treated correctly for all of the 22 years she has worked at the research station.
"I can't stand the abuse - the pruning, not picking the right size," Appleton said.
Today crape myrtles come in so many various sizes, she said, that you can find one that grows to suit your space without pruning. Today, unlike Mom, anyone who purchases a crape myrtle should decide ahead of time where to plant it and how tall it should get. (See chart at left.)
Buyers should look for a variety that fits their space, whether it's dwarf, semi-dwarf, medium or tall. There are even dwarfs, or miniatures, called "myrtlettes," which are meant to be container-grown. My mother should have had a myrtlette.
The same goes for colors. All sizes come in many color choices, including lavender, magenta, pink, purple, fuchsia, even fire engine red.
Appleton probably deserves a nod of thanks for red crape myrtles. When she studied for her doctorate at Oklahoma State University, she helped her professor, Carl Whitcomb, with a breeding program to develop true red crape myrtles. Appleton says she must have planted thousands of crape myrtle seedlings in those years, the 1980s.
Finally, about a decade ago, after years more work, Whitcomb introduced Dynamite, the first crape myrtle with true red flowers. Since then, several red cultivars have been developed, and some, including Carl's Dynamite and Red Rocket, should be available at local nurseries.
Appleton grew up in the North where it is too cold for crape myrtles to grow, and she has loved the trees ever since she was introduced to them in the South. My mother, being from Richmond, liked the idea of having a plant that was symbolic of this area when she moved here. And the crape myrtle has been just that for more than half a century.
In the 1940s, the late horticulturist Fred Heutte, Norfolk's first superintendent of Parks and Forestry, convinced the city as well as garden clubbers to line Norfolk's streets with colorful crape myrtles. Heutte was so successful with his campaign that some thought Norfolk should be named the crape myrtle capital of the world.
These days the tree also is touted for its "winter interest," words that weren't so often used decades ago. In winter, the crape myrtle's gray outer bark peels back to reveal handsome, cinnamon-brown wood.
In fact, Appleton's favorite is the Japanese crape myrtle, Lagerstroemia fauriei, a straight species tree that she loves because of its deep cinnamon-colored bark. "In the winter it has the best of all barks," she said.
The crape myrtle's summer beauty is a given. The flowering period can be so long that the crape myrtle is sometimes called the tree of 100 days. To have a tree that bloomed profusely from July through the dog days of summer was wonderful for my mother, who could no longer garden much when she lived here.
"You couldn't ask for a more pest-resistant, carefree plant," Appleton said.
Full sun and well-drained soil is all it needs. No other flowering tree that I can think of blooms for so long and with such ease.
Nothing made my mother happier than her crape myrtle, which took over blooming chores for most of the summer. And nothing makes me happier now than to see her tree work right on through the summer for me.
Mary Reid Barrow, barrow1@cox.net
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
