PlantFiles: Yellow Wax Bells
Kirengeshoma palmata

Bought this in Iowa (Z4b/5a) about 7 years ago in a 3" pot, it survived 2 winters there; moved it to Long Island NY (z7a) where it's now about 4'x4', blooming more every year for a few weeks. A couple of blooms left as of Oct 5. It's growing with ferns, monkshood, hydrangea, tricyrtis, spiderwort. Deer have sampled it in the past but Liquid Fence keeps them away.

I love this plant. It grows beautifully in 2 different gardens, one in Western Pennsylvania near route 80, and also on the Southwestern coast of Nova Scotia next to a protected back bay. The first year it grew to 2 feet high and 2 feet wide. It is one of the few late summer-early fall bloomers in my gardens. The leaves resemble a shorter, stockier version of the oak-leaf hydrangea, and the flowers are sprays of a pale, buttery yellow which project out in front of the leaves. A nice contrast against the foliage. It is so different, that it catches any gardener's eye. I was suprised to find that it is in the Hydrangea family.

The plant is about 15 years old and is in 3/4 shade and moist acid soil. When it reaches full summer growth it is about 5 by 4 feet in size. It was obtained at a garden sale at the Berry Botanic Garden in Portland, OR. I have never encountered any pest problems, but I do use slug-bait. I indroduce my friends to it as "the japanese aristocrat". Most of them say theve've never seen it before.

Seem to be solidly zone 4 hardy. Found out that they are very senstive to frosts and freezes - one year I had a unusually warm early spring and it came up earlier than usual then a late freeze hit it hard along with woodbine. Almost every other perennials just shrug off the freeze. Very late bloomer, here in Minnesota its blooming time is just barely before the average frost/freeze date.

Very nice color of yellow. Good to see some sunny color at the end when everything is starting to go dormant. Love the leaf shape and the swell of the flowers. Nice complimentary plant to the shady area. Want some more.

kirengeshoma palmata is native japan, where it is a rare plant. Easily cultivated in a moist, humus-rich, well drained soil in shade or part shade.
Bloom time is very unusual for a shade perennial, and it is worth including in any shade garden for this.

Mine has been growing for 5 summers, and gets better year after year. It's a great large plant for a shade garden! It gets very little sun, but it performs without fail each year! It isn't a flashy plant, but it is very pretty, and the bloom season lasts for several weeks. It doesn't get much care where it is growing, but it doesn't seem to mind.

I too love this plant, I have been growing it now for three years. I love watching the flower buds grow and swell up. My plant seems to do fine in a rather dry sandy location with only a little dappled sunlight. It's great for a woodland garden.

What a beauty! I planted two last fall -- they were at the last of their bloom. One was k. palmata and the other, its open-belled cousin k. koreana The palmata was the less hardy-looking of the two, and I wouldn't have been that surprised to have lost it, but it's the other one that still hasn't come up. I don't think it's the fault of the plant -- a fellow MG had convinced me to mulch with thrice-chopped oak leaves, and I think I lost a lot of things to rot and suffocation.

The palmata is already quite tall and bushy and very healthy looking. Its foliage is a rather dullish green, but looks good against the flashy-foliaged plants I'm using with it -- pulmonaria in several varieties, hakonechloa, and aucuba to one side. I think I'll transplant some lamium in there as soon as I'm sure what's going to come up. Love this plant!

This is my new favorite flower.
The bells are heavy and fleshy over 1 1/2 inches long - a pleasure to touch as well as look at. The unique shape of the flowers is welcome so late in the season.
The plants grow to about 3 feet tall in woodland settings - damp shade. They grow upright, and are rather strong and woody. Only the weight of the seedpods tends to pull them over.
Each plant will have dozens of these bells, but heavy rains tend to knock off the flowers. The seed pods swell to about 3/4 of an inch, and contain three compartments of small scaly seeds.
This is my first attempt at propagation, (trying both cuttings and saving seeds) and will report on my success (or failure) in the spring.