Of all the ways to enjoy indoor flowers at this time of year, simply cutting dormant branches of flowering trees and shrubs and bringing them inside your warm winter home to bloom is perhaps the most overlooked gardener’s trick. Yet it is much easier than inducing spring bulbs and most houseplants to bloom. It’s also free.
Getting plants to bloom ahead of schedule is called “forcing,” though some people might call it the gentle art of persuasion. I recommend starting with a few branches of forsythia because it forces more quickly than most flowering shrubs and is very common. In fact, forsythia grows like a weed and won’t miss a beat if you cut off some branches. If you don’t own one, ask friends to let you cut some wands from theirs in exchange for some of the early flowers you will produce. You also can purchase branches from a florist.
Cut the branches with sharp hand pruners during a warm spell, as branches cut in freezing weather usually won’t respond to this treatment. You can cut short sections, or, if you have a really tall vase and a taste for drama, go for 4- or 5-foot lengths.
Next, soak the entire branches lengthwise in a bathtub of tepid water for a couple of hours. Then cut an inch off the ends of the stems under water. If the stems are thicker than 1/2 inch, make a 1-inch-long slit up the middle of each branch from the end to help it absorb water. Then put them in a vase. Change the water and recut the stems every week, and that’s it.
Gradually, the dormant flowers and leaf buds that were formed last fall will unfurl in a fascinating, slow-motion process. This is much simpler than forcing spring-blooming bulbs such as hyacinths, crocuses, narcissus and tulips. That requires potting the bulbs in mid-October and keeping them in a 35- to 48-degree location such as a cold frame for at least three months to simulate winter before bringing them indoors to bloom.
Forsythia blooms outdoors in April, so if you cut them now, the flowers will open in three weeks, giving you a bouquet of bright yellow flowers in March. The later in winter and the warmer the weather is when you cut the branches, the faster most shrubs will force. Forsythia is so vigorous that it will produce not only flowers, but often roots, which you can plant outdoors in the spring to start new shrubs, if you want.
To avoid having to change the water weekly, use a flower preservative or add a tablespoon of Listerine or non-diet lemon-lime soda to the water. Opaque vases hide sprouting roots. If you are using tall, top-heavy branches, fill the vase halfway with washed sand, pebbles, or rocks to keep it from tipping.
Woody plants that bloom early in the spring are the best candidates for forcing. Pussy willows (Salix caprea) and witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) bloom even earlier than forsythia, and also are easy to force.
While yellow or white flowers keep their colors, pink or red ones tend to emerge as pale pastels when forced. The brilliant orange blossoms of flowering quince are usually pale melon-colored, and normally red or pink apple and crab apple flowers open almost white. Flowering quince shrubs quickly become overgrown if interior branches and trunks aren’t thinned out, so this is one plant I always prune and force.
You can try a branch of any species and see what happens. I often recut parts of branches broken by winter storms and stick them in a vase. There’s nothing to lose and sometimes they bloom. I ended up with a house full of apple blossoms after cleaning up storm damage last winter.
April bloomers are best to force now. These include PJM rhododendron (the very common small rhody with the 2-inch-long, purple-tinted leaves), flowering almond, cherry and plum, Magnolia soulangiana and stellata, spicebush (Lindera benzoin), daphne, fothergilla and spirea.
If you don’t want to feature naked sticks in a prominent location for several weeks while waiting for them to bloom, speed up the process by setting the branches in a bucket of water off-stage in a cool place, where temperatures are ideally 45 to 70 degrees. Arrange the branches for display when the buds begin to show color. It’s also helpful to cover the dormant branches with a plastic dry-cleaning bag to create a little greenhouse, letting in some fresh air when misting them once a week.
However, most people enjoy waiting and watching for the swelling and opening of spring buds. Forcing branches puts you on intimate terms with shrubs in your yard that you may barely notice the rest of the year.
Many flowering shrubs have wonderful fragrances that you notice only when you cut them and bring them indoors. Fothergilla’s fuzzy white flowers smell like honey. Some varieties of witch hazel have such a powerful, sweet scent that the spidery yellow flowers are almost incidental.
Flowering pears, however, have a stinky scent, so don’t force these.
Once introduced to forcing, you may want to branch out into some unconventional flowers, such as the chartreuse blooms of sugar maples, the brilliant red tassels of swamp maple or the fuzzy dangling catkins of willow, filbert, birch, alder and beech, which look intriguing when combined in arrangements with other flowers.
If you find you enjoy touring the garden in February and March to cut a bouquet for the house, consider planting some early-blooming shrubs specifically for forcing in future winters. Daphne and dwarf fothergilla fit easily into small gardens.
For more information about forcing flowering deciduous shrubs and trees to bloom, see the University of Illinois Extrension Web site, www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/forcing.
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Plants to force
Here are a few flowering shrubs that thrive in Illinois and can be forced:
Crab apple
Flowering almond, cherry and plum
Flowering dogwood
Flowering quince
Forsythia
Hawthorn
Honeysuckle
Lilac
Pussy willow
Redbud
Spirea
Saucer magnolia
Star magnolia
Vernal witch hazel
Viburnum
Source: University of Illinois
Extension
