Hydrangea

My climbing hydrangea, Hydrangea anomola subsp. petiolaris, has been clinging to the trunk of my red oak for six or seven years. I seem to remember reading somewhere recently that this particular plant has been reassigned to the genus Schizophragma. Let me know if you can shed any light on this. Last summer it finally got its first flower which are flat clusters held on horizontal branches that protrude out from the main plant. It grows by anchoring it's peeling, reddish-brown stems to rough surfaces with aerial rootlets and has reached a height of well over ten feet.

I've planted mine a couple of feet from the tree and trained it over to the trunk where it was allowed to grow upward. In the fall it turns a nice yellow color and in the winter the exfoliating stems are attractive against the tree trunk with or without a covering of snow.

Hydrangea aroborescens, the smooth hydrangea, is a very old-fashioned plant. I remember two clumps that we called snowball bushes flanking the steps to the wide porch of my grandmother's yellow bungalow. The cultivar 'Annabelle' is popular because of it's very large flower heads. I doubt this is 'Annabelle' because it has smaller flowers but I like it anyway. For me it seems to be a very durable plant. The pictured clump was literally chopped out of a thicket at the corner of the house where it may have grown since the 1920s and unceremoniously plopped in the south shrub border to fill a gap. This shrub flowers on new growth so after it's well-established, if it gets too rangey you can cut it down almost to the ground after it's dormant and it will regrow and flower the following summer. After this treatment it gets more but smaller flowers.