Smoke Bush
Cotinus coggygria
Choose between the smoky flower haze and the foliage — a March cutback buys one at the cost of the other, and verticillium wilt is the real worry.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Purple and burgundy
- Flower color
- Purple and violet
- Sunlight
- Full sun.
- Watering
- Drought-tolerant once established.
- Feeding
- Rarely needs feeding.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- An optional hard prune in March, if it is the foliage you want.
- Apr–May Bud Break
- May–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Apr Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 11 ft 6 in
- In-row spacing
- 11 ft 6 in
- Between rows
- 14 ft 4 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 17–23 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
It suckers from the base, and on a grafted purple-leaved plant the suckers come up green, which is the rootstock and should be cut out at once.
The habit is Smoke Bush’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
Ornamental grasses, Lavender, Roses
Shrubs, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com