How to grow wintersweet? Can its fruit be eaten? One article explains it clearly

Wintersweet, a deciduous shrub, often growing in clumps. Wintersweet bursts into bud in the depths of winter when all other flowers have withered, braving the cold and defying the frost, embodying the Chinese nation's unyielding character in the face of brutality, and offering people spiritual inspiration and enjoyment of beauty. It is good for courtyard planting, and is also suitable for old-stump bonsai and cut-flower and shaping art; it is an ideal precious flowering tree for winter flower viewing. The flowers are fragrant and beautiful, and it is a landscaping plant. The roots and leaves can be used medicinally, to regulate qi and relieve pain, dispel cold and counteract toxins, and to treat bruises, lower back pain, rheumatism and numbness, wind-cold colds, and bleeding cuts; the flowers relieve summer heat and promote salivation, and treat restlessness and thirst, and qi stagnation with chest tightness; the flower bud oil treats burns. So, how do you grow wintersweet? Can its fruit be eaten?

I. How do you grow wintersweet?

(1) Propagation methods

Wintersweet is commonly propagated by seed, grafting, cuttings, division and other methods.

1. Seed propagation: grow seedlings and then transplant. Harvest the fruit in June-July, extract the seeds, and store them in moist sand for later use. Sow in March of the second year. Take out the seeds, rub off the waxy coating in water together with the sand, then sow. During the seedling stage, pay attention to weeding and fertilizing, and grow for 2 years before transplanting.

2. Grafting propagation: use seedling or division-propagated plants as rootstock; cleft grafting and approach grafting work best. In mid-March to April, select thick, longer branches, remove the tip, and cut them into 6-7cm scions with 1-2 pairs of buds. For the rootstock, cut the seedling off 3-6cm above the ground, perform cleft grafting, apply mud slurry, and seal the rootstock and scion. After 3 years of cultivation, a plant is formed.

3. Cutting propagation: softwood cuttings in summer are best. After dipping the cuttings in 1×10-4α-naphthaleneacetic acid for 1min, insert them in a shaded plastic film shed, where they root relatively easily.

4. Division propagation: in February-March, dig up and plant the sucker shoots produced by the mother plant. For transplanting, open holes at a row and plant spacing of about 1.3m each, and plant 1 seedling per hole. Each year in early spring and the cold season, carry out intertillage, weeding and topdressing once each, mainly with human and livestock manure water. To promote flowering, every year in March-April, shorten the branches and pinch out the growing tips.

(2) Cultivation methods

1. Plowing: plow after flowering, to a depth of 20-25cm, slightly shallower under the canopy to avoid damaging the roots.

2. Fertilizing: apply base fertilizer in spring after flowering together with plowing. Wintersweet likes fertilizer, but avoid applying concentrated fertilizer. Open ring-shaped or strip-shaped fertilizer trenches below the outer edge of the canopy, 20-30cm deep. For mature trees, apply 3000-5000kg of high-quality decomposed farmyard manure per mu; for 1-2 year old young trees, the fertilizer amount is 1/3-1/2 that of mature trees. Apply topdressing once in late June when flower buds differentiate. Apply 20kg of compound fertilizer per mu, broadcast below the outer edge of the canopy.

3. Watering: wintersweet is drought-tolerant, but water should also be supplemented in dry seasons. In July, during flower bud differentiation, suitable soil moisture should be maintained. During the flowering period, the soil should be kept moderately dry to reduce flower drop.

4. Shaping and pruning

① Shaping: multi-stem shaping is commonly used. After planting, select and keep 3-4 vigorous branches evenly distributed in all directions as main trunks (if there are no branches, cut back hard leaving 4-5 plump buds above the ground), cutting back to leave 3-5 nodes; after they sprout, use them as trunk extension shoots and side branches. Note that the main branches should not overlap or cross each other, and promptly prune away lower root suckers, sprouting suckers, weak branches and dead branches.

② Bud removal: when wintersweet leaf buds have sprouted about 50cm, remove the excess tender buds that are dense, inward-facing and close to the ground, to reduce nutrient consumption. In the rainy season, promptly prune away the miscellaneous branches that grow out, useless branches, branches that disrupt the tree shape, and branches that block wind and light.

③ Pre-flowering pruning: after wintersweet loses its leaves and before the flower buds swell, for some long branches leave a pair of leaf buds above the flower buds and cut off the upper part without flower buds; cut off dead branches, diseased and pest-infested branches, overly weak branches, and dense, leggy non-flowering branches and root suckers not used for renewal, to save nutrients. When pruning before flowering, operate carefully; do not randomly cover or bump them, so as not to knock off the flower buds.

④ Supplementary pruning after flowering: after wintersweet flowers fade, supplementary pruning should be carried out in time. The main task is to thin out aging branches, dead branches, overly dense branches and leggy branches, and to cut back weakened main branches or branch groups, to achieve the goal of rejuvenating branch vigor and tree vigor. However, for main branches that are too high, too long or too strong, cut back at a larger, moderately vigorous slanting branch, letting a weaker branch lead, to control branch height, branch length and branch vigor, and achieve balanced branch vigor and tree vigor. Shorten one-year-old branches: cut the main branch extension shoots back to leave 30-40cm, other relatively strong branches to leave 10-20cm, and weak branches to leave 1 pair of buds or be thinned out. After weak branches are thinned out, new shoots can still grow from the base. In addition, after the flowers fade, promptly pinch off the spent flowers (when no seed is wanted) to prevent fruiting from consuming nutrients, so that next year the branches are thick and the flowers abundant.

(3) Pest and disease control

Wintersweet has relatively few pests and diseases. Occasionally stem-boring pests occur; together with dormant-season pruning, the affected branches can be cut off and burned together with the pests.

(4) Harvesting

Fresh-cut wintersweet flowers are generally harvested when the flower buds first open, and placed in a cool place after harvesting.

II. Can wintersweet fruit be eaten?

Wintersweet fruit cannot be eaten. Wintersweet fruit is the fruit of the plant wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox). Its medicinal name is: tubadou; it is toxic and can be used as a purgative; it must not be eaten by mistake. Wintersweet fruit is green before it ripens, and only turns grayish-brown after ripening.