I just purchased a Satomi a few days ago. Some of the flowers are white with a very light tinge of pink, others have some pink at the outer edge and one that is starting to wilt is a reddish pink color. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow. I see a few trees in the neighborhood that are a beautiful pink. I am wondering if my tree will look that nice in a few years. I have heard that the Satomi can take a few years to develop a nice pink color. I do know also from reading on this forum that the intensity of the pink is dependent on the climate of the area and that seedlings also can have a broad range of bract colors. I assumed that it was a grafted tree but I'll verify that tonight. I guess my question comes down to this: The flowering color that I see now, is that what I should expect for now on? Thanks.
The color of most pink cultivars do seem to intensify with age. If you want a more intense color, try planting in sun, making sure to keep your tree well watered. This should also increase the number of blooms you get. I should also mention that I saw trees come into my local nursery labled as 'Satomi'. Some were the normal pink coloration while others were more or less pure white. I think these last were mis-labled. It happens.
Local grower had a sale recently, including various sizes of their own pink Kousa introduction. Some plants had white flowers touched pink up on top of the plant where there was more light exposure, others were uniformly deep coral--all labeled the same. The paler ones looked like the flowers were not all pink due to crowding in the row or holding bed. But it wouldn't be hard to make a case for them being a different clone than the coral ones as well.
Often field grown pink kousa dogwoods bloom very pale to white the year they are dug. The trees that were not dug from the same group bloom the characteristic pink. Your tree should bloom the intense pink Satomi is known for once it is established.
Your tree should bloom the intense pink Satomi is known for once it is established. I am not so sure of this. The Satomi that I have seen come in from Oregon are not the same shade of pink that I am used to. The old shade of pink was a rose-pink and I am not so sure we are seeing that color universally like we once did. We felt these plants would lose some of their color the more they were grafted. I think what we felt may happen with this Kousa has. The original plant of the rose-pink was the Satomi, the selected red form was called Satomi red and the selected white form called Satomi white before much of the naming of the various forms have been called since. We should not see a huge variance in color of Satomi from plant to plant from the same growing source, even taking into account different light intensity considerations. The old plant was pretty uniform in color for us, no matter if it was grown in the ground in full sun or grown in containers under 50% shade cloth in a saran house. It is true that this Kousa will have its color intensify as the plant ages but uniformity of color even in the juvenile plants that I've seen has been troubling to me. Jim
You may be right about the relation of color intensity to available light. Perhaps the color variations I am seeing are due more to the maturity of the bracts as they come into full flower. I also think the visual effect of a plant grown in full sun may be a bit more striking, especially from a distance. Here's a pink cultivar grown in full sun by my neighbor
Stock I was describing had a definite pattern of bleached (all-white) flowers being on lower branches of comparatively sparse, drawn-up looking specimens--like would be produced in a crowded situation--with half-pink (or nearly so) bracts on top. Same appearance as with purpleleaf Japanese maples having partly green leaves on more shaded portions. Other dogwoods at same event, with all pink, seemingly deeper pink bracts were shorter and maybe denser, with more bronzed foliage as well. Same purpleleaf plum (or purpleleaf Japanese maple) can have different leaf coloring on different sites, dogwoods may show some of this as well. Magnolia cultivars can have wildly different tepal pigmentation and size--that may be a more similar example to dogwood flower bract variations. Maybe one time environment, next time genetics. What made me wonder about the uniformity of the naming of the dogwoods was that even the fully exposed bracts of the one set were partly white (as well as the pink seeming less deep, but I didn't hold the two types next to one another and check this). Deeper, true-to-type (I guess) ones also seemed to have broader, touching bracts. If it turned out they had some 'Satomi' or other older, less extreme flower type as well as their own cultivar all on offer that day as their own one that wouldn't surprise me. Passing through local urban residential neighborhoods where pink Kousa (and probably pink Orton hybrid) are now common and in flower much variation is apparent. Many different clones, or variation within clones due to site conditions? Both?
Thanks for all the feedback. I'll try to take a picture of tree in the neighborhood that I keep comparing mine to. The tree I speak of is a beautiful pink, is planted in full sun and probably is 5-10 years old if I had to guess. Here is my first attempt at posting attachments. Hopefully they provide enough detail. I did look at the lower trunk and the tree appears to be grafted as it has a stub from the rootstock. Depending on the feedback I receive from these pictures, I may decide to return this tree and purchase next spring and find a tree in bloom that has the coloring that I am looking for, or at least a more consistent color. Please note that I will be planting the tree in a location that gets about 6 hours of sun, from about 8am until 2pm. I already have a Trinity Star white kousa dogwood in the front yard, which is why I really wanted a pink one in the back yard. Thanks!
With Satomi we are dealing with a Kousa Dogwood that has become impure over time with grafting our pink scions onto a white flowering Kousa rootstock. Aside from genetic variability we have essentially bred into the plant by using a white flowering rootstock, we can see color variance in these plants depending on the age of plants, light intensity, water, pH and soil and nutrient factors that can greatly affect the color of these plants from grower to grower. I seriously doubt that Gordo would have gone out and purchased named forms of the pink Satomi had he known that they would all look the same at some point in time. The hope is that they will not all be the same plant with varying shapes to the flower bracts and the color changes the flowers can go through in a blooming period. Many of the current day Satomi do have high white in their color which tells me they are not the same form we had years ago and quite frankly I did not expect to see today what we once saw several years ago. Any more if the plant shows pink in the color it can be called Satomi. No one hoodwinked you there, as you do see pink but in this Dogwood there can be varying amounts of white and degree of pink that we will see from plant to plant depending on the grower. All I made mention of is that there should not be this variance in color from the same growers plants as they come into a retail nursery. As a matter of fact I have seen Satomi come in from a well known wholesale nursery with the same color as the Dogwood that is shown in these photos. We can go round and round as to why this Dogwood does not show an evenness of pink that others that have been in the ground may show or why one growers Satomi may not be the same in color as another growers will be, let's say in Gresham and in Boring. This is true for many plants in that the plant comes into the nursery as a Pink Dogwood and we see the flowers show high white the first few years we have the plant and wonder what happened. Well, it takes a while for some of these plants to adapt to our conditions and it took one of my Kousa chinensis over 10 years to adapt to my mountainous location for it. The color I saw after it finally bloomed when I chastised myself for ever buying it and the color I now see which makes this plant off-limits to anyone, now no one gets a piece of this plant, can and does happen. Jim
Jim Excuse my ignorance, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but what you seem to be saying is that over time, and through some means that may well be beyond the scope of this thread, the genetic material contained within grafted scions of an individual cultivar can become corrupted, resulting in variation in observed phenotypes inconsistant with the original plant. If this is the case, would it not make more sense to propagate such cultivars through other means - cuttings or micropropagation, for example in order to maintain the true form of the plant? Perhaps there are some down sides to this besides the obvious?
Yes, I am saying that over time our continued grafting of these plants can cause a change in them. We always felt the Satomi should be grafted onto a pink seedling rootstock rather than a standard white as we felt over time the white rootstock may or could influence the color of the rose-pink flower color. This may have happened and it may not have but in time we will have the tools to check it out and be more certain. Very few people would look at the big picture in this manner but when we see the results of what the original Satomi was and may still be, I bet it is not the same as what the general and consensus Satomi is now and this was not solely due to environmental and/or cultural factors. I am saying there is the likelihood that the current day Satomi may have been influenced more than we care to admit by the white flowering rootstocks and yes, once the original plants that came into us were grafted we felt those offspring from then on should be propagated by cuttings. So as not to overly influence the color of the flower with continued propagation by grafting. Unless we used a pink seedling and even then we felt they needed to be a pure line seed which we did not feel any that we had were, as our pink seedlings came from a grafted, rather than from a cutting grown, parent but we used them anyway for our initial grafting and sent cuttings from these plants back as per the original agreement. Gordo, I like what you are doing and as a collector myself in other plants, as well as having a small collection of Cornus florida since the mid 80's, I can appreciate what you are trying to do better than most people will. I will find what you are seeing with your pink Kousas to be more valuable to me than any book as then I can compare notes with others I know that have some of the same plants as you have. This is what some of us will do when we do not have the plant ourselves but know where some of these plants are to feel as though we have been around them enough to have a general idea as to what they are doing now and how they are behaving for people. Jim
It is great to have some very knowledgeable gardeners contributing to this and other forums. What rootstock is used for Cornus Florida Rubra, Cherokee Chief, and other pink varieties? I have never seen or heard of this with these dogwood trees. Florida also seems to have its adult color bract in young trees. This color variety that we see could be as simple as lack of management of the Satomi name like one of you suggested. If some farm raises a bunch of seedling trees from a Satomi tree and some have pink bracts then they may just sell those as Satomi even though the seedlings will most likely have different characteristics. These trees should be sold as Satomi Seedlings, Cornus Kousa pink, or as a new variety that ideally should be registered for propagation and monitoring. The theory of the rootstock gaining control of the scion and changing its properties seems a bit unlikely, but I don't know enough about this subject to say yes or no. I would expect that this behavior would show itself in fruit and other grafted trees yet I don't hear of this. Soil acidity, moisture, sun exposure, and other environmental factors do play a role in a plants growth habit, leaf coloring, and flower size and coloring so it could just be that. But since pink kousa's are relative newcomers to the nursery trade and they are popular with consumers, a dilution of the Satomi name with trees showing any amount of pink is probably the most likely culprit. I saw a beni fuji kousa the other day. Very nice bract color, though the small bracts lack the impact viewed from a distance. Do the bracts on this variety get bigger with age or do they remain small with respect to those of satomi? Thanks.
For descriptions of pink Kousa cultivars look at out of print NORTH AMERICAN LANDSCAPE TREES from Ten Speed Press and new DOGWOODS from Timber Press. I looked at a couple 'Satomi' at a retail outlet today. Both had same grower tags, implying same origin but one had a redbud hanging over it and was mostly white.
The theory of the rootstock gaining control of the scion and changing its properties seems a bit unlikely, but I don't know enough about this subject to say yes or no. I would expect that this behavior would show itself in fruit and other grafted trees yet I don't hear of this. What happens when a Japanese Maple reverts? We can see a variegated Maple like Beni schichihenge have good variegated color for 7-12 years and then the Maple no longer has any variegation. The Maple has changed and with the reversion it is generally accepted that the scion was overtaken by the rootstock. Even when there are no visible signs below the graft that this had happened, which was our biggest concern for the use of overly vigorous rootstock for certain variegated Japanese Maple varieties. For Fruit Trees that are grafted more so than the ones that are budded we do see influence of the rootstock in the tree and all we have to do is think in terms of dwarfing rootstock on Apples and how the rootstock affects the size and shape of the tree as well as the size and quality, sometimes even the color, of the fruit. We see the influence of the rootstocks on Citrus with the cold tolerance in the top growth. That was essentially bred into the plant and the cold resistance came from the rootstock. Place a Eureka Lemon on its own roots out in 18 degree weather for 6 hours and watch what happens to it as opposed to a Eureka grafted onto trifoliate Orange rootstock. The argument that the rootstock does not influence the scion does not apply with these above examples. Virtually all Cornus florida are grafted onto white seedling rootstock. Jim
