This feature will appear in the blog throughout the year. Many plants have fallen out of favor over the years, but for the sake of biodiversity and landscape interest they deserve to be resurrected. Today’s featured plant is:
Caragana arborescens, commonly called the Siberian Pea Shrub.
One of the few truly yellow-flowered trees, this beautiful shrub or small tree has largely vanished from the landscaper’s portfolio. The species grows as a multi-stemmed bush with a spread of twelve to eighteen feet and a height of fifteen to twenty feet. Native from Siberia to Mongolia, it is extremely hardy from zones 2 through 7. The plant is adaptable to soil conditions of high alkalinity (+7.0 pH) through acidity (-6.5 pH). It is tolerant of sweeping wind conditions. This plant belongs to a group of plants that are able to fix nitrogen in the soil.
A weeping cultivar is slightly more readily available, producing a stiffly-pendulous small tree, the perfect yellow flowers of which appear on previous year’s wood, in early- to mid-May when the leaves are two-thirds to fully developed. The tree form also thrives in adverse conditions, including salt in maritime locations. Its adaptability and the varied ways it can be used - as a focal point, in a rock garden, as a patio screen, in containers of diameters of thirty-six inches or larger - makes it a valuable addition to any garden. It works well with evergreens and ground covers, annuals, perennials or a combination of them. It deserves to be as widely-planted as the blue spruce, but it isn’t, and can even be difficult to locate in garden centers. Hopefully, increased demand will lead to increased supply in the future.