PlantFiles: Red-Tipped Photinia, Fraser Photinia
Photinia x fraseri

Disease prone and overplanted. I have two growing in pots and it's a constant battle to keep them healthy. If they croak, I will happily replace w/ something else.

We have had one of these in full sun on the edge of our property (zone 7b) since 1999, generally ignored it, and never had any problems with it. This year it got a really brilliant red, which I don't recall its ever doing before. I just read at another web site that "pruning for air flow around branches is crucial" to avoid fungus, but we've never pruned it, but it is exposed to the wind where it is located.

Editor's Note: Photinia x fraseri, Red-Tipped Photinia, appears on the Texas Invasive list

I have not been living in Texas all that long, 7 years, and find that there are three specific trees grown in the Collin County area. They are the Bradford Pear, Crepe Myrtle and the Red Photinia. All three of these are very hearty as they grow well in full sun and are very drought resistant.

The Red (-tipped) Photinia on the east side of my house was nearly 30 feet tall before I cut it down to standard bush height. I thought it was a tree until I came to this website. These are very fragrant when they flower, and are quite showy. If you are a fan of cherry blossom trees you may like this tree, too.

There is another one of these in my back yard, which doesn't need to be trimmed all that often. It seems content growing in its own corner of the yard. Each spring the flora on it is amazing simply because on the other side of the walkway is a crepe myrtle that adds to the canopy affect overhead.

I say this plant is drought resistant, but if one has become conditioned to regular watering, it may lose its ability to adapt to drought conditions. Therefore, if you have a watering system installed in your yard, make use of it.

overused in this area for several reasons. It is hardy, looks good year around, and has few if any pest or disease problems. However, lack of faults is hardly a good recommendation in my book. Fraser photinias become scraggly unless grown in full sun and pruned periodically. The worst feature of fraser photinia is that because regular pruning is required to keep its shape, flowers and berries are seldom seen, which are lovely. This plant is good for certain situaltions but due to its overuse, it looks ugly in a lot of them. I recently went to a local nursery and there were thousands of these plants. If you get this plant, give it some room and let it grow unpruned and you will be rewarded with a lovely spring flower display with some red berries in the fall and winter. Or, plant several dozen of them in a border around your lawn and prune them twice a year and call it landscaping.

I seem to be the only Zone 6 representative of this bunch, so I thought I'd leave a note on the Red-Tipped Photinia. Overall, my experience is very positive; however, photinia does require some mild maintenance to thrive.

The most annoying aspect of the plant is its susceptibility to 'Endomosporium leaf spot,' which is what causes some of the leaves to brown and then drop. I've found that regular treatment by root and by spraying as well as immediate removal of browning leaves--even leaves with just a little brown/black--keeps this plant looking great all year.

Mine has done well and seems able to bounce back from anything. Even though our notorious ice storms of the past several years regularly bend it to the ground, it bounces right back; even after severe pruning (over half the plant), it bounces right back.

Mine is planted in an "open" area at the beginning of a garden row, which I think helps with the leaf spot as it allows for more ventilation. Like roses, it's never good to splash water on photinia's leaves when watering for this same reason.

I love the color it adds to my garden in the winter!

"Red Tip" photinia does fine in the mid-Atlantic states and will generally loose any leaf fungus / mildew on its own, as our summers are not as long and humid as those in the deep south where this plant may run into problems.

"Red Tip" photinia does best left untrimmed, where it will grow into a small broadleaved-evergreen tree. They can take shearing but they want to be a small tree! This plant is completely hardy in Zone 7a, Wilmington, Delaware where I live.

Sadly, I have struggled to keep a hedgerow of about 25 of these alive for the last eight years. I constantly fight the leaf spot, yet my neighbor has had his as long and never had a spot! With a new house going up behind us, I really want to keep them alive. I wish I had known how prone they are to disease when we planted all of them.

Unfortunately, this awful ugly thing was already part of the landscape when we bought our house. It is always diseased even though I sprayed it regularly the first year. The second year I left it hoping the thing would just die, but it wouldn’t do that either. Finally, I paid a tree removal company to dig the hideous thing out. I would not recommend planting these things intentionally.

We are fortunate to have 3 large healthy Red-Tips on our property. They make a nice screen for the street. We've never pruned them or given them any special attention. Two are in shade and one is full sun. All are very full and bloom nicely with plentiful red tips in late March or early April. The birds like to hide in them.

I have been growing one of these for about 7 yrs now. I keep it limbed up so it grows in tree form. It reached a ht of about 30 ft in 5 yrs. We recently took out a large portion of it that had grown over the house, and shading my flower beds too much. I am going to keep it in check and not let it grow that "wide" again.
It is a very care-free plant, which is a big plus for me. But..... the 2-3 wks it's in bloom are a bit scary! It absolutely swarms with all types of bees and wasps. I have to be really careful when gardening near it in the Spring, as I'm allergic. Other than that I love this "tree".

I have several of this plants that were here when I bought the place three years ago. They were small and kind of ugly...but then when I watered them they became lovely! I love their red shiny tops.
I don't use them as a hedge because they are so interesting growing freely. I just bought a half-dozen more for foundation plantings. They are in partial shade.
Our weather is always below freezing in winter, dry and rarely gets over 85 in summer. I can't imagine ruining their lovely shapes by pruning them into a hedge.

I have had mine for ten years and have not had any problems. Mine grow in part sun.

I have about 40 of these on my small lot. They surround my back fence and are also on one side of the house. They are probably about 15 years old (house was built in 1989), but are 15 to 20 feet tall and 10 feet deep up top. I keep them partially trimmed up from the bottom 6 feet so that things can grow under them, and they look very nice this way. They make a wonderful bit of privacy in my backyard that backs directly up to the neighbors back yard. When trading a a small house/large yard for a large house/small yard, these were a big reason I bought this house - I can almost forget the neighbors are so close.

I have noticed a lot of black spotted leaves, and dropping of the new red leaves in one area recently, and not all of them bloomed this year, so I will probably be fighting a losing battle soon. I will just replace them with something more disease resistant, though it will be hard to find something that will fill in with as much privacy without swallowing up my back yard.

These plants are fast growing, drought tolerant, disease resistant, and beautiful. When the flowers cover a plant it has a gorgeous effect, and the berries are equally pretty. They get very large, and their foliage is pretty all through the year, but especially in the spring.

I have 4 of these planted in front of a 2 slat fence along my driveway and I absolutely love them. We bought the house 8 years ago and we prune them heavily twice a year (June & January) to keep a beautiful 5' x 20' "living fence" between our property and the neighbors. The picture I've uploaded was taken in October and doesn't show them in all their glory with the beautiful red tips but gives and idea of how nicely they can keep their shape.

I have found that the standard form is much more controllable and consistent than the bush forms - the 'head' tends to form more-or-less naturally. Here in South-western UK the Fraser Photinia seems quite happy all year round. I have, though, had difficulties with mould when raising cuttings (probably because I tend to overwater!)

I personally don't care for the poor "Red-Tipped Photinia", but I temper my dislike with the knowledge that they are often planted in the wrong location, and then torturously pruned to maintain a certain height and width. If they are allowed to grow in their natural form, and bloom, they can be fairly attractive.

However, they are subject to problems with blight, and there are almost always better choices for foundation plantings :)

San Antonio, TX
Entomosporium leaf spot, a fungus, will cause gradual thinning, defoliation, and death of the plant. As soon as you observe dark spots on the leaves and/or browning (especially in clusters), spray a fungicide, such as thiophanate methyl (e.g. Cleary 3336) or myclobutanil (e.g. Systhane)at 7-day intervals as long as signs of disease are present. Some garden centers are not selling photinia due to this devastating disease becoming so widespread. One of my neighbors planted these the whole lenghth of his backyard fence and as foundation plantings in his front yard. There are only 2 pitiful looking ones still barely hanging on in his backyard and now the ones in the front are starting to die. I had 2 specimens in front of my house (planted by the housing developer when I bought the house), that had small twigs with leaves that were browning out as has my next door neighbor. I did not know what was causing this problem until it was too late for my plants to be saved. These plants are grown all over my neighborhood and amost all of them are now starting to die.

I agree with suncatcheracres who states that they need constant pruning to keep them manageable. Enjoying a more natural appearance, I prune each individual tip as needed instead of using hedge clippers which is a real pain in the you know where! Plus, I am pruning off the red tipped new growth which defeats the purpose of having the plant. If I had the courage, I'd dig them up as I have the pittosporums that came with the house. If I could just let them grow and do their own thing, I am sure I would like them better. They are planted in the wrong place where I have to keep them under control.

My mother has had another type of photinia growing in her yard for over 60 years (she's 91). It has random leaves that turn a brilliant red, unlike the red tip photinia I have with only the new growth being "red". The leaves only are really red if we have very cold weather which is seldom. Otherwise, they are a bronzy color. Her photinia has a growing habit more like a large shrubby tree and does well in alkaline soil. My red tops required an acidic fertilizer to keep from suffering from iron chlorosis.

This plant is grown all over the Southern USA, where is is quite overused as a hedge plant. Unfortunately it gets some kind of leaf spot and/or fireblight that makes it very unattractive, but doesn't seem to kill the plants. They just linger for years, looking very ugly.

My Southern Living Garden Book says the original Fraser Photinia was developed in the early 1940's at the Fraser nursery in Birmingham, Alabama, and was called 'Birmingham.' It was developed as a mildew resistant Photinia but still requires spraying for the fungus-induced leaf spot. Better varieties are 'Indian Princess,' which has smaller leaves, and 'Red Robin,' a variety with more compact growth and more disease resistance. The highly pruned photinias with masses of flowers pictured above are the most attractive red tips I have ever seen. When they are used in hedges they flower sporatically and unevenly.

I personally can't stand these plants. The red-tipped, glossy foliage looks bizarre--as if it were lacquered--and the plant seems to grow very unevenly, so that hedges never really look attractive, having both huge and very small individuals right next to each other, and all sizes in between. Plus they are fast growing and need constant pruning. And a single specimen has a strange, oval shape, growing wider than they are tall, but thinner again at the top--hard to describe--like a huge, blotchy, dark green egg growing in your front yard. They were planted quite extensively in the 1950's and 1960's and now there are huge, overgrown specimens all over the Southern U.S.

My Mother grew a short hedge of red tips in South Georgia in partial shade, where they grew at a much slower rate, and way in the back yard to hide the alley with the garbage cans--and that's about the only good use I can think of for these plants.