American Smokebush

Pretty purple mist and dramatic fall color, the unique texture and color of the native American Smokebush (Cotinus obovatus) will amaze you! Now you can have a conversation starter and turn heads with ravishing colors while supporting biodiversity and boosting natives in your area!

Well-known for its purple foliage with reddish-orange or yellow veins and glowing red undersides, Smokebushes are colorful all growing season! The rounded to oval leaves are leathery and keep their color in the heat of summer better than other varieties of this species.

The foliage fills the open spreading crown and wispy pinkish branches, but Smokebushes are most well-known and named for the blooms that appear as puffs of purple smoke, they appear in summer and persist until autumn!

Sometimes known as Smoke Trees (Smoketree), Smokebushes intensity of color holds steadfast all growing season, maturing into a purple-tinged blue-green! You and your pollinators enjoy the pleasant floral scent. These delightful blooms are bright red with hints of pink and violet. Resembling something created by Dr. Seuss!

In autumn, the fall foliage combusts! The leaves take on rainbow-sherbet shades of raspberry, orange, lemon, and lime! Hardy throughout USDA hardiness zones 4 through 8, these large shrubs or small trees can grow 20-30 feet in height and nearly as wide!

Planting and Application:

Native Smokebushes are impressive specimens - both in their rounded shrub form or 'limbed up' into a small tree form - to create a showy spectacle in your landscape! These rounded multi-branched trees not only have unexpected year-round color and whimsical mist-like blooms creating a wondrous display that slows traffic!

In their shrubby form with their limbs intact to the ground, Smokebush are great privacy screens along the roadside or fence line! Heads will turn all growing season when planted en masse, as thick hedgerows and shelterbelts for wildlife cover or in groupings for privacy and color! Wildlife shelter and food, the small seeds on female Smoke Trees feed a wide variety of songbirds!

Snip a few stems of the fluffy plumes for bouquet filler and the wonderful puffs have a pleasant floral scent that will greet you when you arrive home! Plant a Smokebushes by your home's foundation. Create outdoor garden rooms and secluded scented seating areas with these large-scale shrubs! These colorful deciduous shrubs look great in rows as magnificent backdrops to perfume the entire landscape!

• Pink Spring Foliage, Matures Blue - Dark Green
• Incredible Colorful Fall Hues - Raspberry, Orange, Lemon & Lime
• Lightly Fragrant, Whimsical Puff-Like Purple Flowers
• Great Wildlife Shrubs or Ornamental Trees With Pruning
• Seeds on Female Plants Feed Birds
• Fantastic Fall Color & 4-Season Interest, Hedges & Specimens

#ProPlantTips for Care:

Smokebushes have the best coloration and bloom in full sun and partial sun. In warmer climates, they can handle afternoon shade, but handle sun without fading no matter where they're grown! Provide regular moisture for new plants and a well-drained area of the yard, thriving in almost any soil type with medium moisture. American Smokebushes are very hardy and adaptable and can handle rocky clay soils so long as they have good drainage.

Cover the soil with a 3-4 inch layer of arborist mulch to insulate the roots and enrich the soil. Prune in the very early spring to keep an open canopy, remove unwanted or crossing limbs. You can control the size by pruning after flowering. For denser shrub-forms, try renewal pruning to cut out the oldest, less vigorous limbs every 3-5 years. Drought-tolerant and disease-resistant, these are generally pest-free plants!

• Full Sun & Partial Shade
• Highly Adaptable To A Wide Range of Soil Types
• Moderate to Low Moisture Needs
• Disease, Pest & Drought Tolerant
• Prune In Late Winter/Early Spring

Gorgeous color and easy-breezy native beauty, the large American Smokebushes is a whimsical native shrub or tree that puts all eyes on your landscape! Order yours now at Nature Hills!