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Cotinus
Also called Smoketrees
Cotinus, the smoketrees, is a genus of about seven species of large shrubs or small trees from the warm temperate Northern Hemisphere, prized for their deciduous leaves and fluffy, smoke-like flower plumes. Popular garden kinds such as C. coggygria cultivars are grown for purple foliage; they do best in full sun and dry, poor soil.
Cotinus (), the
smoketree or smoke bush, is a genus of seven species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, closely related to the sumacs (Rhus).
The smoke trees, particularly C. coggygria, are popular garden shrubs. Several bronze or purple-leaved cultivars of C. coggygria have been selected, with warm pink inflorescences set against purple-black foliage; the most common in commerce are 'Notcutt's Variety' and 'Royal Purple'. When brought into cultivation together, the two species will form hybrids; some garden cultivars are of this parentage.
Cultivation is best in dry, infertile soils, which keeps the growth habit more compact and also improves the autumn colour; when planted in fertile soil, they become large, coarse and also tend to be short-lived, succumbing to verticillium wilt disease. They can be coppiced in early spring, to produce first-year shoots up to 2 m tall with large handsome leaves, but no "smoke".
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Cotinus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
