Images Depict Mature Plants
Princess Zoey Crape Myrtle
Lagerstroemia x 'GA 0702' Princess Zoey
No plant can have it all...but in Woodie's opinion, the Princess Zoey Crape Myrtle is pretty close to it! Boasting long bloom times, disease resistance and cold tolerance, what more could you want in a flowering summer shrub?
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Princess Zoey Crape Myrtle Shrubs for Sale Online
As a popular Crape Myrtle in the Princess Series, the Princess Zoey Crape Myrtle sports bright cherry red and pink blooms that cover this mid-sized Crape myrtle from summer to fall. The pink flowers held against deep green foliage make for a jaw-dropping contrast that will be the star of your summer garden debut.
The foliage on these flamboyant flowering shrubs is dark green in summer and turns to a reddish-purple in fall. This moderate grower reaches 4 to 5 feet tall and 2 to 3 feet wide.
The Princess Zoey Crape Myrtle is disease resistant, cold tolerant, and extremely easy to grow. Ideal conditions for these dwarf Crape Myrtles include full sun to partial shade and average to moist soil conditions.
The stunning blooms, compact shape, and hardy nature of the Princess Zoey Crape Myrtle make it perfect for a specimen plant and used in flower beds, containers, and mass plantings. Bring your yard to life this summer with the elegant flowering beauty of Princess Zoey.
| Hardiness Zone: | 6-9 |
|---|---|
| Mature Height: | 4 to 5 feet |
| Mature Width: | 2 to 3 feet |
| Classification: | Mid-sized bush form |
| Sunlight: | Full Sun |
| Habit: | Deciduous, densely branched, multi-stemmed summer through the first frost. |
| Flower Color: | Red and Pink flowers in mid to late summer through the first frost. |
| Foliage: | New growth emerges a rich dark green, changing to an equally vibrant reddish yellow in the fall. |
| Soil Condition: | Any well drained soil |
| Water Requirements: | Water well until established. |
| Uses: | Extremely attractive when used as a focal point in the mixed border, mass planting, or a specimen planting . Small enough to be used for a large containers on the patio. |
Additional Information
History and introduction of Crape Myrtle:
On September 9th, Garden Adventures Nursery in Nixa, MO, owned by Dow and Linda Whiting, introduced their new line of dwarf crape myrtle including Princess Zoey Crape Myrtle. These new plant varieties came out of a local hybridization program that took a number of years to develop. In the mid-1960s, the National Arboretum embarked on a crape myrtle breeding program that continues today, forty-five years later. It was begun by the late Donald Egolf, a research horticulturist whose goal was to produce disease-resistant, cold-hardy crape myrtles. In the first five years, he focused on breeding and selecting pure Lagerstroemia indica for these traits. The result was the release of six cultivars in 1967 and 1970, each named for a Native American tribe, chosen to impart a distinctly American designation to introductions from this program. Several of these selections are still widely grown today, including ‘Catawba’, ‘Cherokee’, and ‘Seminole’. Though an improvement over cultivars then available, they were to be followed by a much more important milestone in breeding and development. In 1956, a long-forgotten species of crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia fauriei) was rediscovered on the small Japanese island of Yakushima. Botanists found only one specimen on the island. Seeds collected from that tree were sent back to the United States and dispersed to arboretums and nurseries. The resulting seedling trees proved to be immune to powdery mildew, a disease that often afflicted L. indica and that the USNA breeding project had sought to eradicate. This purely white-flowered tree was less showy in bloom than L. indica, but it bore dramatic cinnamon and burgundy exfoliating bark. Egolf began hybridizing Lagerstroemia indica with the seedlings of L. fauriei. He hoped to impart disease resistance and handsome bark to the hybrid offspring, which were assigned the name L. xfauriei. What he achieved was a lasting legacy of spectacular and popular cultivars. Disease resistance, beautiful bark, and enhanced cold hardiness were imparted to these hybrids, just as Egolf had planned. Following the release of the first hybrid selections (‘Muskogee’ and ‘Natchez’) in 1978, twenty-one hybrid cultivars would be selected, named, and introduced over the next twenty-five years. Each was thoroughly tested for disease resistance, length of bloom, and cold hardiness in Washington, DC (USDA zone 7a). Later, a third cold-hardy species was added to the hybrid program: Lagerstroemia limii, a lavender-flowered species occasionally grown in western Oregon. Its large furry leaves and rough bark distinguished it from L. indica and L. fauriei. In 2003, the first two triple hybrids were released, fulfilling a long-sought goal: the introduction of truly red-flowered hybrid crape myrtles (‘Arapaho’ and ‘Cheyenne’) with disease resistance. This National Arboretum breeding program continues to use names of Native American tribes, though not all of the introductions so named are hybrids; the first six cultivars were purely Lagerstroemia indica. Lagerstroemia indica, commonly known as crape myrtle, is an upright, wide-spreading, multi-stemmed, deciduous shrub or small tree in the loosestrife family. It typically grows to 15-25’ tall. It is native from the Himalayas through southern China, southeast Asia and Japan, but has naturalized in the U.S. from Virginia to Arkansas south to Texas and Florida.
