Brocade Variegated Japanese Wisteria. "Nishiki" in Japanese means "brocade," inferring that it is embroidered. Many cultivar names of variegated plants in Japan will contain the name "Nishiki." The foliage on this particular cultivar has some of the most outstanding variegation of any cultivar in the genus Wisteria. The leaves are literally white with a light sprinkling of green, closely resembling a water-color painting. It is almost beyond belief when one first sees it. It doesn't begin flowering until it, is well established but then has the typical long racemes of lavender blue flowers of the species. It is amazingly vigorous considering how little chlorophyll it has. It does well in full sun to part shade. Because of the small amount of chlorophyll in its leaves, we have to graft this plant rather than root it, so one must watch for all green "suckers" that might come up around it and keep these pruned out. Now if you really want to impress your neighbors,the best way to tell whether one has a Wisteria sinensis or a Wisteria floribunda is to see which direction its stems twine around an object in climbing. Wisteria sinensis climbs in a counter-clockwise direction or "Sinistrorse" twining; whereas, Wisteria floribunda climbs in a clockwise directions referred to as "Dextrorse".
Zones 6-9
