I’m always surprised when I look at the stats for this site and I see the search term “Rose of Sharon” come up almost daily all year round. There’s obviously a lot more people than I thought looking for information about Rose of Sharon shrubs!
My Rose of Sharon came to me 7 years ago as a gift from my neighbor. She has a Rose of Sharon, lets call it the mother tree, that is about 40+ years old.
I’m not sure how tall her tree is but lets say it’s somewhere between 12 and 15 feet tall. The seedling she gave me has grown quite a bit over the years and it’s only about two feet shorter than the mother tree. It’s trunk and branches have thickened, but they are still smaller in diam. than the mother trees – but not by that much.
This is definitely not the best picture of the tree that I’ve ever taken, but to show you how big it is this year and what it looks like in full bloom, here we go …
You can see the power line above the tree so that should give you an idea of how tall it is.
It’s been a beautiful addition to my garden. I love it’s purple blooms. Birds love the tree year round, and butterflies and other insects enjoy the tree when it’s in bloom. I’m sure it’s helped attract some of the butterflies that frequent my yard regularly each year.
The Rose of Sharon is a fairly hardy tree, but it’s slow to leaf out in the spring. It’s often one of the last plants to start to show signs of life in my garden. I usually see leaves forming by early June, but there have been a few years where it hasn’t leafed out till close to the end of June.
My elderly neighbor always thinks her tree is dead each year because it’s so slow and each year I reassure her that it will leaf out and bloom – and it does.
I’ll bet that the Rose of Sharon being slow to start up in the spring or early summer is one of the major reasons why I get so many searches on my site for this lovely shrub.
I used to have a Hardy Hibiscus that would die down each winter, but for the past two years it’s failed to come up. I think it’s gone. My tropical Hibiscus – that I keep indoors in the winter – is doing well in a large urn at the front of the house. There are several peach colored blooms on it.
Do you grow Hibiscus? What type and what have your experiences been with the plant?
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I just received a new edition of my ASPCA newsletter and one article in particular caught my eye. It was about the increased incidence of pets being poisoned by the Sago Palm. This plant can also be quite toxic to young children.
A chemical in the plant called cycasin is toxic and often causes permanent liver damage as well as neurological damage if enough of the poison is absorbed by the body. The seeds are the most poisonous part of the plant, although all parts of this plant are toxic, and the effects on humans are seizures, coma and death. Of course the seeds are an attractive reddish color so children and possible curious pets might be drawn to the plant.