Fast Growing Shrub With Thin Leaves & Red Branch Tips

Fast Growth Rate

• Tolerant of drought conditions, photinias prefer warm climates and acidic to slightly alkaline soils. The southeastern United States meets these cultural requirements for photinias and supports their fast growth rates. Sometimes a photinia shrub is a single specimen plant, but gardeners usually choose them for massed plantings to form hedges or landscape screens. Filling in quickly, a line of single shrubs forms a solid evergreen hedge which, if left unpruned, grows 10 to 15 feet tall.

Foliage

• The aesthetics of photinias offer a beautiful touch to the spring landscape. When warm weather prompts new growth, the solid-green shrubs feature branches tipped with red leaves. From a distance, tall massed plantings make bold statements for nearly a month.

  In two to four weeks, after newly formed red leaves mature, they turn green, and shrubs return to their solid-green state. Leaves are thin and oval-shaped, averaging 4 inches in length. Foliage of photinia does not undergo a color change in autumn and, as an evergreen, it retains its leaves throughout winter.

Flowers and Fruit

• Even though photinias are in the rose family, the fragrance of their flowers is less than desirable. Branch tips hold clusters of tiny white flowers that bloom profusely in summer. Although they present a beautiful, showy display, their odor is quite offensive to many people. Fruits, in the form of small red berries, follow summer flowers and are toxic to animals, according to "The Merck Veterinary Manual." Berries and foliage contain cyanogenic glycosides, compounds that adversely affect cellular respiration.

Disease Problems

• Aside from their many benefits -- glossy, evergreen foliage, red leaves in spring at branch tips, white flower clusters and fast growth habit -- photinias are high-maintenance, disease-plagued shrubs. Although fireblight and mildew also compromise the health of this plant, entomosporium leaf spot poses a particular threat to vitality. Severe infestations of the fungus causing this disease result in unsightly spotted foliage and eventual leaf drop.

  Close spacing, wet leaves and poor air circulation around plants promote the spread of this pathogen. Treatment requires regular, repeated fungicidal applications of products containing myclobutanil or thiophanate methyl.