Source: Mail Order Natives (FL), Rock Bridge Trees (TN)
Size shipped:
Planted:
First flowering: June 2020
(This plant stayed behind when I moved in 2021; therefore, the following text will receive no further updates.)
I now have had two of these obscure native trees. My plan for the first one (from Mail Order Natives) was to grow it in root-pruning containers over summer 2020, then plant out in fall by the swingset, since it's shade-tolerant but also nicely fragrant in bloom, very cold hardy, and native. With how warm winter 2020 was, I was lucky to get this one shipped while it was still dormant (as shipping from Florida took three days). Since hoptree is cold-hardy all the way to USDA zone 3, I wasn't concerned about late freezes.
It wasn't until the end of April that this little stick finally started waking up, as tiny new green began to appear at some of the nodes. Until then, I had needed to rely on the scratch test to satisfy myself that it was still alive.
The hoptree did flower in its first spring with us, and I'm glad to report that the fragrance of the flowers is a pleasant one, as I had seen conflicting reports on this point. However, if the reason that Mail Order Natives cut the trunk back before shipping it was to induce branching, they failed, as only TWO buds below the cut ended up growing out.
In late July 2020, I noticed that the newer leaves on the hoptree had what looked like interveinal
chlorosis going on; this by itself didn't worry me, but then one week in mid-August, the hoptree
started wilting regardless of watering, with no warning. Fearing a repeat of the autumn Higan cherry's
untimely demise, I figured that I needed to clear out the old substrate and repot, guessing that
perhaps the temperatures, rainfall, and fertilizer had combined to collapse the Fafard 52 faster than
expected. I found that the hoptree hadn't even come close to colonizing the whole volume of the #1
RootBuilder II pot, but also that there was a large amount of what appeared to be grains of salt
around the roots. Soaking the roots in a bucket of water while I mixed up the substrate hopefully took
care of most of that.
My choice for the new substrate was Fafard 52 and fir bark, but no fertilizer. This was primarily
because I still planned to plant the hoptree in the yard in the autumn, so Fafard 52 wouldn't have much
time to collapse again and would prevent the root ball from drying out too fast when the planting
day eventually came. Also, there was no point in using up 6-month controlled-release fertilizer if the
plant was only going to be in its pot for 1-2 months more. Also also, I needed to keep using up the
Fafard 52 somehow, and short-term, low-risk (the tree was cheap and I haven't grown too attached to it)
pottings like this one seemed the best use case by which to do so.
By September, things had not improved even after chopping off all of the ruined foliage, and the
top of the remaining trunk was beginning to die back, as revealed by the scratch test. So I ordered
another hoptree, from Rock Bridge Trees; one of their USPs is that they grow everything in root-pruning
containers. This one came in a RootMaker 5"-diameter knit fabric bag, and it had a nice full root ball
with roots growing out through the root-constricting holes in the fabric. I planted it immediately
in the spot by the swingset, the spot I'd originally intended for the first one.
Given its root-pruned origins, I expect greatness for this second hoptree come spring...