over-wintering and/or I.D. pyracantha...

any one have direct experience in zone 5B ?
i dont know which variety mine is and from what i have read,
there seems to be a range of hardinesseseses, from zones 5-7...

or if anyone is able to identify mine, that would be great - pics below (first styling)







as always, thanks in advance

I grew pyracantha outdoors in a very windy zone 5b (eastern ID) = tough plant! I do not recall the soil frost depth, however.

You shouldn't have any trouble with mulch around the pot, say.

i wasnt planning on burying the pot outside...
looking more for advise on sheltered over-wintering (garage or basement ?)

still thanks for the reply !

hello ?
ello ?
llo ?
lo ?

anybody ?
nybody ?
body ?
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(its hard to type an echo )

i aint too proud to beg if i have to...

I'd have responded, but then, there's this line:

any one have direct experience in zone 5B ?

And, frankly, I don't WANT to have direct experience with 5B, especially at this time of year. Bad enough down here.

JimLewis wrote:I'd have responded, but then, there's this line:

any one have direct experience in zone 5B ?

And, frankly, I don't WANT to have direct experience with 5B, especially at this time of year.  Bad enough down here.  

Ha, ha  

BTW, Jim - that is a very amusing 'signature' you have.

Hello Kevin - distinguishing species and cultivars of Pyracantha can be challenging, and I cannot see much detail from your photographs.  However my guess is Pyracantha coccinea, scarlet firethorn, because of leaf shape.  The leaves on your tree seem to have their widest point beyond the midpoint of the leaf and with a more or less rounded tip, this is typical of P. coccinea.  Many of the other species have leaves with their widest point below or at the midpoint of the leaf.   Please know that this is just my guess based on what I can see in your photos.  Again, Pyracantha I.D. can be tricky and leaf shape can be variable.

I have no experience with your climate, so I will not comment on that.

Wishing you the best with this tree!
David B.

thanks david and i hope you are right as the coccinea is the hardiest of the ones i was looking at...
only thing i see is that coccinea is supposed to have toothed leaves and mine are only barely visible serrations...

i guess i am looking for the safest way to over winter it...
if it helps any, it did come from brussells bonsai nursery
and for now my plan is to keep it in the garage.

and hey, yeah jim... mid november turned into farkin' january here with a quickness
but we are supposed to have a touch of october this weekend, but then february is right on its heels for next week
i checked your weather and looks like this arctic blast extended its icy tendrils waaaaay down south

i'm just glad i'm not in buffalo n.y.

I keep several of them in the garage, we are in zone 5a-5b. They do fine in the garage as long as I water them. It has gotten down to 15 degrees in the garage. I have tried wintering 1 in a gravel bunker and 1 on the north side of the house. The gravel bunker tree had about 80% die back and the north side tree died. So into the garage they went next year. I still have the one that died back 80%. That was back in 2009.

Mike

MIKE !!!

thanks man... i committed to at least a short light dormancy (like a pomegranate or crape myrtle here),
but now i think i will let her take the longer full-on winter snooze

thanks again for the informed input.

Just saw this post, for some reason I missed it, maybe because I am not fond of Pyracantha.
I wintered one in my well house for several years - did fine. Wintered it simply under the bench a couple winters - did fine for 2 then died one particularly nasty winter. Have not bothered replacing it.

Trunks are very slow to thicken, bark stays smooth for many years. Otherwise easy to work with. Nice flowers and fruit. To my eyes, boring with the exception of the few very exception trees occasionally exhibited. The one in the permanent collection of Chicago Botanic Garden is very noteworthy. But most strike me as boring. - Just my personal taste.

Leo Schordje wrote:Trunks are very slow to thicken, bark stays smooth for many years.  

shshsheeee-it mang, the trunk on mine seems to have bulked up considerably over just this one season...
(hard to tell in picture... didnt take detailed trunk scale pics...)

Leo Schordje wrote:But most strike me as boring.  - Just my personal taste.

i dunno man... i think they are fairly dynamic.  

but like you said, personal taste.

Hi Kevin.


This is Pyracantha Rogersiana. I've posted it for two reasons. One is to eliminate it from your search, and the other is (hopefully!) to show that Pyracantha is not the most boring bonsai candidate. Mine is by no means a classic but it gives me a lot of pleasure. I winter it outside where -6 is not uncommon but does not last for long, so my feeling is that a cold garage or even greenhouse would work. I know you are in a more taxing climate, so this is more encouragement than experience. What was left of your flowers looked considerably bigger than this, and the orange (not red) berries are something of a giveaway. Good luck with your ID. Cheers. Rick.

One day later I realize my post was less than helpful.

Knowing what you have in terms of winter storage, your garage is best option for this Genus, regardless which species you have. Your garage is warm enough for the more tender Pyracantha species or hybrids, and it is cold enough for a good winter rest. I think your garage is warm enough for zone 7 trees, so you should be good with it in there. Temperatures below 0 F or -16 C can become "iffy" for more tender varieties of Pyracantha - your garage stays warmer than that, so it is the best choice.

I will ammend my post to say - I personally have never been able to make anything interesting with Pyracantha - how's that?

Rick36 - that is a nice one, definitely not boring. Thanks

I like Fire Thorns because there there such versatile trees. You can have very small trees, different styles of trees and sometimes really big massive tree's. Here is a link to one of our club members Fire Tree. He keeps it in a sun room during the winter here in Colorado. It never gets really to cold in it. The tree has a tendency to drop its leaves during the growing year.

Large Fire Thorn

I have a large 3 trunk Pyracantha x Monelf and I do nothing then put it on the ground and some pine needle mulch. If that was my tree I would plant it in the ground and maybe thicken it up and use a sacrifice banch or something. it's nice but I have to agree it doesn't have much character

thanks for the rest of the replies...

the garage it is !!!
(though i do have one of the cuttings in the house and am curious how it will do w/ zero dormancy...)

and giga, i would be surprised if mine did have much character....... yet.  
it is still really quite young.