With many varieties in our garden and many varieties that I have pruned for clients over the years I have always found the Seiryu the most difficult to prune. In the container it is a breeze due to the very slow growth rate. We like to keep our field grown seiryu at a smaller scale size as well so it requires pruning twice a year. I let the foliage grow for a full year as I wanted to do a video. Here it is:
@Otto Bjornson I have not had time yet to view your video, but just wanted to add that I have also noticed this dichotomy between the growth rate of Seiryu in a container vs in the ground. It seems much more pronounced than most other cultivars. My own one is an extremely slow grower, but recently I viewed a specimen at Westonbirt that was planted in 1987 and is now about 8m tall (27 feet) and much wider.
There is also a Seiryu at the Van Dusen gardens in Vancouver which is taller then any I have seen. It is a very old mature specimen. The seiryu can also be grown from a seedling so that likely would enhance the variation, especially if gathering sine wood for grafting. The seiryu was one of the most popular trees we sold and fortunately it was one of the most successful to graft.
There are 2 Seiryu at JC Arboretum in Raleigh, NC. I've attached the younger one which doesn't have a date as to when it was planted but it's in the newer section of the Arboretum. It looks like it is mid-20 feet in height and also much wider canopy. The older one was planted as a 1 gal in 1997 and it appears bigger but it shares the canopy of larger and similar size trees and it looks like it has been competing its way up -- hard to get a picture to show its size since its in the middle of all these trees.
