Wisteria Plant Specimens

Trained On Standards

• In horticulture, a standard is a plant that is trained or grafted to form a trunk. A wisteria that is trained on a standard, for example, looks like a wisteria tree rather than a vine. Usually, wisterias are trained on supports and not allowed to branch. When they reach the desired height, which is usually 3 to 5 feet, the top is trimmed. By trimming the top, the vine is encouraged to begin branching. At this point it can be trained along a form or allowed to weep. With enough age, almost any wisteria will eventually lose its bottom branches and naturally become more tree-like. Training wisterias on standards simply expedites what may have taken many years to occur naturally.

Older Plants

• Very old wisterias will have fascinating gnarled and twisted trunks. Left on their own, a wisteria can have an enormous reach, sometimes engulfing entire buildings. The world's largest known wisteria specimen is located in California and covers an entire acre. The oldest specimen in England was planted in 1816 and covers the three-story walls of a brewery. An entire park was built around a 500-year-old specimen in China. A wisteria does not have to reach this age extreme to be a specimen, but it certainly showcases the wisteria's potential.

Bonsai

• Wisteria can make a great bonsai specimen. First, it's trained up and not allowed to branch so that it forms a trunk. Having reached the desired height, it is then skillfully pruned. The result is a much smaller plant that is artistically manipulated. The vine is often trained along a form and continually pruned so that the trunk becomes large while the plant remains small in stature. Because it's a vine, it's especially easy to train into unusual shapes. There are specimens where the trunk is bent, twisted or even tangled.

Espalier

• Espalier is the art of training a plant in a somewhat two-dimensional arrangement. Espalier plants are trained to lay flat along a fence, wall or trellis. Wisteria is easy to train for this purpose since the vines are pliable and easy to bend. They are, however, high maintenance and require a great deal of pruning because of their aggressive growth habit. At the Mario Righini Estate in Italy there is a specimen espalier that has been maintained flat against the wall for nearly 300 years.