Wisteria brachybotrys (w.venusta) 'SHOWA-BENI' silky wisteria

Wisteria

Genus Wisteria belongs to the pea family and comprises around six species of climbing woody vines native to East Asia and the eastern parts of North America. It is a genus with a surprisingly ancient history: botanists consider it a remnant of a once more widespread flora that survived the climatic shifts of the last few million years. The first European references to wisterias date from the late 18th century, when dried specimens of Japanese plants reached herbarium collections. The genus was described by the American botanist Thomas Nuttall (1786–1859), who named it after his friend, the anatomist Caspar Wistar (1761–1818). Nuttall, however, misspelled the name as Wisteria instead of Wistaria, and under the rules of botanical nomenclature the error has been preserved ever since. The journey of wisterias to the West began in 1816, when agents of the East India Company sent the first cuttings to England, and within a few decades the plant had transformed pergolas, arbours and urban courtyards across the continent.

It is hardly surprising, because few plants in temperate gardens can stop a passer-by as reliably as a wisteria in full bloom. When its flowers unfold in spring, it feels like a coloured waterfall. Long racemes hang from pergolas and old walls like curtains of purple, white or pink, swaying gently in the wind, their scent mingling with the first warm days. Wisteria has an exceptionally long cultural footprint: in China it was grown for centuries as a symbol of friendship, devotion and spring renewal, while in Europe it became one of the defining features of 19th‑century romantic gardens. In Japan it has been cultivated for generations and woven into poetry, painting and garden design. In Europe its thick, woody vines still shape the appearance of many historic estates that were among the first to import this once exotic novelty from the East. The genus is botanically interesting in that its species differ in the direction of twining: some coil clockwise, others anticlockwise, which is one of the most reliable diagnostic features, and several species are capable of producing a second flush of flowers in summer.

Wisteria brachybotrys, the silky wisteria, is a Japanese species with a long tradition of cultivation in its homeland. It grows naturally in the western part of Honshū, on Shikoku and Kyūshū, usually in mountain forests and thickets at elevations of around 100–900 metres. It differs from other species at first glance by its large individual flowers, strong fragrance and the silky indumentum on young shoots and leaves, which earned it the Japanese name “silky wisteria”. The species was scientifically described in 1839 by Philipp Franz von Siebold and Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini, who obtained it during their work in Japan and included it in their monumental Flora Japonica. Siebold had the plant precisely illustrated by the Japanese artist Kawahara Keiga, which shows that this species held an important place in his collections. From the outset it was long known also under the name Wisteria venusta, as described by Rehder and Wilson, who at that time were not yet aware of Siebold and Zuccarini’s Wisteria brachybotrys from 1839. Although W. brachybotrys never became as widespread in the West as the Chinese or Japanese wisteria, it has always been valued in Japan for its fragrance, late flowering and softly pubescent young shoots, which give it a distinctive appearance.