Wisteria

Scientific name: Wisteria brachybotrys cv. Alba
Wisteria floribunda cv. Alba
Wisteria floribunda cv. Noda Issai
Wisteria floribunda cv. Royal Purple

Common name: Wisteria

Family: Fabaceae - Faboideae (Leguminosae)

Location

From the Car Park or the Visitor Centre, wend your way to the Formal Garden area, and between the Herb Garden and the Formal Lawn you will pass beneath a wisteria arbor of sheer delight. Wisterias are also flowering above the Visitor Centre deck and around the Brunet Pavilion.

The four plants displayed here came, as did so many of our wisterias, as donations from the acknowledged authority on the subject and generous friend to the Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust, Dr Peter Valder. They are all progeny from ‘Nooroo’, the Mount Wilson property where Peter planted for display and studied, members of this fascinating genus he collected from all parts of the globe.

Testament to this thorough collecting effort are the two purple-flowered plants: ‘Royal Purple’ sourced from the W.B. Clarke Nursery Company of San Jose, California; and ‘Noda Issai’ sourced from the nursery of Mr Kawarada, Ibaraki-ken, Japan, a noted wisteria specialist and author. These two names are considered to represent the same cultivar, the origin of which, Japan or the United States, remains a mystery.

The late-flowering W. floribunda cv. Alba, known also as W. floribunda ‘Shiro Noda’, is claimed by Dr Valder as ‘… the most beautiful of the white wisterias …’. And last, but in no way least, of the four, W. brachybotrys cv. Alba, or ‘Shiro Kapitan’, with its broad, white flowers on short racemes, comes with a taxonomic history of the species, so curly that careful reading of its account in ‘Wisterias, a comprehensive guide’ by Peter Valder, leaves one in need of quiet contemplation and a large draught of this cultivar’s wondrous fragrance. W. brachybotrys is often listed as W. venusta.