There's an entire drive just down the road from us, lined with these poor butchered crapes. I want to go yell at these people. They've not really planted anything else, just these poor crapes....

That was a great news letter. I received it in my email. I love to read what he writes, love his sense of humor.

I received it also, I loved it and agree totally.

Perfect timing for a rant. As I rode the bus home from work today, the crews were out, chainsawing down the top half of every crepe myrtle in my neighborhood.

. They do it over here also. Except for one purplish in colour which grows huge. That one does snap in storms sometimes.
Regards,
Arif.

Sounds like I timed this rant perfectly--dumb luck, but still perfect timing.

Lynn and Susan, since you get Tony's newsletter, I assume that you're familiar with his catalog as well. It has great plants, but I read it just as eagerly for the humor (slightly off-color sometimes, but funny nevertheless).

I love his catalog, for the same reason.

I love the catalog and the plants, so big and healthy!

We also have a chainsaw gang in my city. They hacked off all the Crape Myrtles in Old Town right down to 12" stumps, that was around October. Then in December when another crew puts up the Christmas lights there were no trees to hang them in. so they wrapped the lights around the stumps!

Hi neighbor! Take the ferry over to Norfolk if you need a crepe myrtle fix. They at least seem to have some respect for the trees there (the chainsaw crew was in NC where I'm temporarily residing)... though it was frustrating a few years ago when the city installed a new stop sign under my crepe myrtle then deemed the tree to be blocking the sign and came out with their stump grinder. You can't kill a crepe myrtle that easily - it's now shooting up all over my yard!

As a northerner I'm not familiar with Crape murder. Do the trees send up tons of suckers, post homicidal maniacs? I'll be dealing with that in a few weeks on a Saucer Magnolia that got mangled by an October snow storm in 2011.

They look beautiful as a multi-trunk shrub, stunning. We sold my father's house a couple of years ago and it had a wonderful 40-50 year old crape in front. People would stop just to look at it. It's a rental now and I'm glad we're not there to see it. I hesitate to think what they've done to that crape. The people down the road from me have them done as standards, of course...lollipops that they hack back.

Interesting question, Evan. My family and I lived in Alabama for six years. I had several mature crepes in our gardens. They were gorgeous. I occasionally did some light pruning. I had no trouble with suckering, but then I didn't top them or chop them down within an inch of their lives either.

Crepes are truly a tree/shrub for every season. Not only do they have gorgeous crepy flowers, they have beautiful exfoliating bark which reveals lovely markings, as if someone had come along with a paint-by-numbers kit and decorated the trunk in colors ranging from cream to warm beige and cinnamon. In fall the leaves turn shades of red and gold before they drop, and in winter the limb and trunk markings really stand out.


Exfoliated branches


Fall colors


When we moved back to Iowa (zone 5) from Alabama, I brought this crepe myrtle home with me. I potted it up and for many years moved it into an unheated room in the basement during the winter and lugged it back outside in the spring.


An ice storm in late fall, before I moved the pot to the basement

Beautiful pictures, Larry! As much as I enjoy the flowers, my favorite thing about crepe myrtles is their gorgeous bark

And while we're on the subject, I have a random question... Are there different varieties that do better as trees versus shrubs, or is it all about the pruning? Mine (technically they belong to the city, between the sidewalk and the street, but I think of them as my own until someone shows up to chop one down ) are very much trees, but there's one I pass on my commute that has been pruned into a table - lots and lots of stems coming up, but all the leaves and flowers in a thin, flat layer at the top. I don't think I'd ever have one like it, but it is interesting to look at.

Bit, I believe I've read that more recent breeding has produced mini crepes, only about two feet tall. I'm guessing that there are varieties available in all sizes.

Bitbit, give this link a look. You can find Crape Myrtles that range from a 1-2 ft creeper all the way up to a 25+ ft tall beauty.

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu...

http://www.southernliving.com/...

Thanks for the info, Larry, and the links, Moonhowl. I had no idea there were so many, or such tiny ones!

And somehow from those links and the wonder of the internet, I ended up at my own local botanical garden's website

http://norfolkbotanicalgarden....

We have Crepe Myrtles all over the city, and now I know why! Turns out that Fred Heutte, who helped found the botanical garden, was a big fan of Crepe Myrtles and panted them along many streets... maybe even mine! I've been meaning to pay the garden a visit for years now... maybe this summer when they're in bloom.

There were hundreds in my mothers neighborhood. They had been planted by the builder about 50 years ago and they were all dark pink, all up and down every street, every where! Problem was they were all planted under power lines and eventually they got too big and the chainsaw gang would chop the tops out of them and they would sucker something terrible.
I planted a dwarf in my corner garden, it is white and only gets ten feet tall. But it is a slow grower and this year ,#3 it might hit the 4 foot mark.



bitbit,.. I love the ferry!

You are most welcome Bitbit....glad you enjoyed the links. I do know that many times when you see Crape Myrtles suckering like that it is from stress....drought, damage to the tree, radical pruning. They are truly lovely trees and the cultivars make them very versatile.

We have a huge crepe at the end of our driveway. The first year we lived in HSV (after renting our home for 5 years), I was cutting off the seedheads in order to make them rebloom and one of our neighbors came by and said, "Oh, you don't trim them until February," and I told them what I was doing. I don't think they knew much about crepes having lived in North Dakota all their lives. I also told them that ours wouldn't be butchered in February or at any other time. That year we had three flushes of beautiful blooms.