Takashi Fudano

Typically, hydrangea (Hydrangea spp.) plants produce flowers from early to mid-summer. However, their basal shoots often continue to produce flowers from late summer to autumn, and we call this unseasonal flowering. The flowering frequencies and flowering period durations of basal shoots were studied using 23 hydrangea cultivars and lines in 2017, 2018, and 2019. The flowering frequencies of basal shoots were relatively high in ‘Christmas’, ‘Endless Summer’, ‘Ezo’, ‘Rosea’, and ‘Sumida-no-hanabi’ in each year of the study. The flowering period durations of basal shoots ranged from one to six months among the cultivars and lines studied. Basal shoots of ‘Endless Summer’ and ‘Rosea’ continuously flowered during each year of the study period. The basal shoots of ‘Hatsushimo’, ‘Jyogasaki’, ‘Maihime’, ‘Masja’, ‘Ms. Hepburn’, ‘Uzu’, and No. 5 never flowered after August in any of the study years. Using ‘Masja’ and ‘Rosea’, axillary buds expected to develop into basal shoots were studied for flower bud initiation in November 2018. Flower bud initiation was observed in 8.9% and 77.4% of axillary buds of ‘Masja’ and ‘Rosea’, respectively. The number of nodes produced before flower bud initiation in the buds ranged from 10 to 12 and 8 to 13 in ‘Masja’ and ‘Rosea’, respectively. The numbers of nodes corresponded to those of the basal shoots that flowered up to August 2019 in both cultivars. The number of nodes produced by basal shoots of ‘Rosea’ that flowered after August 2019 ranged from 14 to 19, which was higher than those observed for the axillary buds expected to develop into basal shoots in November 2018. In conclusion, the flowering period duration of hydrangea basal shoots differs among cultivars. The floral initiations on the apical buds of the basal shoots after the previous autumn largely contribute to unseasonal flowering occurrences after August in hydrangea.

Hydrangea (Hydrangea spp.) flower buds usually differentiate from the end of summer through autumn, but some cultivars can also produce flower buds in spring. In the present study, we selected cultivars with high potential for such unseasonable flower bud production in Japan by evaluating the flower bud production on pinch-treatment-induced axillary shoots. We also examined the pinching time and the difference between the two shoot types: previously formed shoots that developed from buds formed in the previous autumn and basal shoots that formed in the current spring. We found that ‘Christmas’, ‘Endless Summer’, and ‘Rosea’ had the highest frequencies of unseasonable flower bud production on the axillary shoots of previously formed shoots (90.0%, 80.0%, and 90.0%, respectively) and basal shoots (90.0% for all three cultivars). When the buds were pinched in mid-April, the axillary shoots that formed on both shoot types flowered from early July to mid-August, which was approximately 1 month later than for seasonably produced flower buds in the same cultivars. In 2011, 98.0%, 90.5%, and 84.0% of the axillary shoots that developed on previously formed shoots flowered in ‘Christmas’, ‘Endless Summer’, and ‘Rosea’, respectively, while in 2012, 63.2%, 54.9%, and 75.3% flowered, respectively. Similar values were seen for the basal shoots, with the exception of ‘Christmas’ in 2011 and ‘Endless Summer’ in 2012, which both had lower flowering rates than previously formed shoots. In ‘Rosea’, flower bud differentiation started just after the pinch treatment, and the frequency of flower bud production decreased when the pinch treatment was conducted after late April. Thus, ‘Christmas’, ‘Endless Summer’, and ‘Rosea’ were considered to have high potential for unseasonable flowering following pinch treatment in early spring. However, unseasonable flower bud production may often be suppressed in pinched basal shoots.