How easy are crape myrtles to start from cuttings?
I'm guessing the best time to do it is in the spring when they are leafing out.
What's the best method to get the best results?

Kidfishing

They are quite easy but you have to time it right. When they are blooming you will probably never be successful. As you guessed, I do all my cuttings in the spring. Those nice big shoots with thick green stems are easy as pie to root. Use rooting hormone and keep the soil moist. It helps to keep them in a cold frame to keep humidity up but it has to be in the shade or else they'll bake.

I've also done it with hardwood cuttings over winter but it was less successful and frankly less fun.

A blogging friend once referred to crape myrtles as "plastic plants"...
Nothing gets any use out of them... no butterfly visits them, birds have no use for them... no caterpillars... you get the idea...

Probably the easiest way to get more of them... is to till the soil around your existing stands.
By turning the soil.... you cut through roots... and in my experience... every single one of those broken pieces sends up new trees!

Or... you could try to dig them out... you will soon see a ton of new trees in the spot that you just took the crape myrtle from!
And... like mickey's mop... every time you attempt to dig out those babies... you will get more!

stone said:A blogging friend once referred to crape myrtles as "plastic plants"...

(rifling through my stuff looking for the barrel of tar and box of feathers...)

As a northerner who has never even seen seen a crepe myrtle flowering... I have to ask, is that true that butterflies don't visit them? They look like they would be butterfly magnets

I like them because they are pretty and they bloom later in the summer early fall when nothing else is blooming. They also tolerate poor soil and take little water. i don't know about the butterfly thing, but I do know I had a birds nest in one once. So there is use in them. The bark adds winter interest also. And you can prune and shape them how you like and they come in huge sizes to miniatures. So, useful

I went all Summer without seeing any bee's until my crepe myrtle bloomed. Now I have seen several honey bee's and bumblebees on my crepe myrtle.

I haven't really noticed any butterflies, but I would think something likes the flowers...
When your underneath a crape myrtle all you can hear is the sound of buzzing at our place.
They come up everywhere, but I want some that are true to name of the one I got a cutting off of.

Dave,
I know some plants you have to have "cuttings off wood" and not off new shoots, I guess that's not with crape myrtles.
Do they bloom the same year with cuttings?

My crepe myrtles are constantly visited by my honeybees. 'Fantasy' in particular is an absolute bee magnet when it's in bloom.

I find that left to their own devices, Crape Myrtles are like weeds, growing from seed or bird droppings. Or maybe their seeds travel a lot because I always have small new plants coming out of nowhere. But then, the Crape Myrtles in this house were originally planted a long time ago so the main shrubs are huge, 2 stories tall, which produce lots and lots of seeds.

Some of the new plants are the same color of my bushes but others are not so... they may have originated from bird droppings maybe? of neighbor's CMs.

Maybe different varieties seed better than others. I know that one CM that is in my yard has little ones coming up around it all the time. Of course the one I want to reseed, my Peppermint CM, doesn't and I have two of them. They are planted within 15 ft of each other so they all get the same amount of care. Sigh. I may try them now and in the spring.

Honeybees loves ours also. When you walk near sometimes it feels like you vibrating or humming,

the peppermint is really pretty.

That reminds me... a few weeks ago, I passed a Dynamite CM at a nursery; it looked like a Peppermint from afar. As the bloom matures, it had turned less intense red and more pink... and oddly, the edges of the old blooms had also turned white. It looked odd having both new full red blooms and those mature blooms at the same time.

When I get near my crepe myrtles it's "abuzz" with honeybees, wild native bees, wasps & bumblebees. Admittedly I don't recall seeing any butterflies sipping form them but the bees both wild & domestic are enough to make it a hit with me.

Crape Myrtle is fairly easy from cuttings - over winter hardwood is the hardest to do as with many species. Use softwood nodal cuttings and when depends on your zone - typically early summer. Be sure to use rooting hormone ( I prefer Dip n Grow), keep soil moist, shaded and bottom heat will help.

I push Zones on CM and have no huge trees - mine die back mostly each year. I do have 8 of 5 varieties. One from seed and one from cutting. Others were purchased.

Good luck.

BTW - bees of all types love mine and I have seen butterflies on my Pink Velour.

I live in northern Utah and this past spring planted a CM. It started blooming last month and I've seen many visitors to it including a single northern swallowtail butterfly. It didn't stay long but it was there. Bees and wasps of all kinds seem to like it.