Few flowering shrubs can best the performance of crape myrtle (Langerstoemia indica), a large shrub or small tree that overflows with brilliant blooms from early spring through late fall. In addition to its prolific blooms, crape myrtle offers striking, sometimes exfoliating, light green, pink or red-brown bark. The tree grows quickly, charging up 24 inches a year in U.S. Department of Agriculture hardiness zones 7 though 9. Although crape myrtles usually top out at 20 to 30 feet, a crape myrtle in Bakersfield, California, registered as a California Big Tree, measures 52 feet high.
Purchase a crape myrtle cultivar that grows over the average 20 feet in height. According to the U.S. National Arboretum, the cultivars L. "Choctaw," "Muskogee" and "Natchez," as well as L. fauriei "Kiowa," all achieve 30 feet. The flowers are bright pink, pale lavender, white and white, respectively.
Give your crape myrtle optimal placement and care. Plant it in full sun in well-draining, fertile soil. Irrigate regularly but infrequently, providing a long, slow drink whenever the soil dries out. Keep weeds and other plants out of the soil in the area under the crape myrtle's dripline, and keep other trees at least 20 feet away to give its roots exclusive reign in its corner of the garden.
Feed your crape myrtle a fertilizer heavy in nitrogen in spring. The nutrient is known to encourage growth. A six-year U.S. Forest Service study of eucalyptus-tree growth in Hawaii found that trees fed with nitrogen fertilizer were more than twice as tall as untreated trees during the first three years of growth.
Things You Will Need
- Garden hose
- The crape myrtle propagates from softwood cuttings taken in late spring or semiripe cuttings taken in summer.
- Although the addition of nitrogen encourages tree growth, your crape myrtle may produce fewer flowers when you keep your foot on its growth throttle.
- Fine Gardening: Lagerstroemia Indica (Crape Myrtle)
- California Polytechnic State University Urban Forest Ecosystems Institute: SelecTree: Crape Myrtle
- U.S. National Arboretum: Crapemyrtle Quick Guide Chart
- U.S. Forest Service: Six-Year Growth of Eucalyptus Saligna Plantings as Affected by Nitrogen and Phosphorus Fertilizer