Meetings with plants: purple smoke bush

Bramble & Briar #116

The foliage of purple smoke bush, Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’, looking impressively dusky in the gloomy June drizzle

The purple smoke bush (there are green versions, too) offered me an introduction to the art of pruning, and just how it’s possible to influence our relationship with the plants that surround us with little more than a pair of secateurs. Before this encounter, I’d thought that pruning was little more than lopping bits off plants, the better to make them fit into their allotted space. The big, plum-coloured, spoon-shaped leaves of Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ showed me that there was magic in those snips.

Another variety, ‘Grace’, showing how the plum-coloured pigment bleeds out of the leaves in autumn

Here’s the thing, though. If you prune for a leafy display, you lose the flowers that give the plant its common name, as the smoke bush blooms on ‘old wood’ – that is, the stems that it grew during the previous year. You could prune it just after the flowers go to seed, in late summer, but because you’d be removing stems with leaves before the plant has the chance to suck all their energy back into itself (this is what deciduous trees and shrubs are up to in autumn, right before the litterbugs fling the spent foliage to the ground in disdain), you’d deprive it of the vigour it needs for the jazzy leaf display next year. So, we make the choice – big leaves, or smokey flowers. And yes, you’re so right: you can do half and half, but it just ends up looking as though you couldn’t really make up your mind. Which, of course, would be entirely accurate. Me? I go for the leaves and forgo the hazy effect which, if I’m honest, is probably a better use of this shrub in a smaller garden – the smokey avatar of a cotinus is most impressively viewed from a little distance, and there’s not really space here to get far enough away for those kind of vista shenanigans.

A close up of the smoky flowers you’ll lose if you prune in winter