Wisteria ‘Amethyst Falls’

Description

Botanical Name:     Wisteria frutescens ‘Amethyst Falls’

Common Name:    Amethyst Falls Wisteria

Description:    This naturally occurring variation of our beautiful native wisteria was discovered in South Carolina.

Amethyst Falls wisteria is a deciduous, twining vine in the Fabaceae (bean) family. It can be planted in sun, part sun, or part shade in moist soil with good drainage. This plant blooms on new wood, providing a gorgeous, heavy bloom in the late spring and a lighter, repeat bloom in summer. The flowers are lightly fragrant, lavender-purple, and borne in cascading 4- to 6-inch cone-shaped racemes. Blooms at an early age. It matures to 10 to 20 feet high and has a spread of 10 to 15 feet wide. Is drought tolerant after becoming established.

It attracts birds, bees, hummingbirds, and is a host plant for lots of butterflies and moths: Marine blue butterfly, Silver-spotted skipper, Long-tailed skipper, Zarucco duskywing, Cuphodes wisteriae moth, Io moth, Evergreen bagworm, Dogwoon borer moth, Limacodid moth, Locust twig borer moth, Horace’s duskywing, Cecropia moth, Blinded sphinx moth, White-marked tussock moth, and Fall webworm. Is deer and rabbit resistant. Its pods and seeds can be toxic to cats, dogs, horses, and humans.

Native habitat is in floodplains, gum swamps, upland thickets, in loamy or sandy soil with acidic pH.

Not salt tolerant of inundation by salty or brackish water. Some tolerance to salty wind but not direct salt spray.

Please plant our native wisterias, Wisteria frutescens, instead of the Category 2 invasive, non-native Asian Wisteria sinensis or Wisteria floribunda.

This plant in 1-gallon containers is 1.5 – 2 feet tall.

Plant Lore:  Genus name honors Caspar Wistar (1761-1818), professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania. Specific epithet, frutescens, means shrubby or woody.

Florida Hardiness Zones 8 – 9