Images Depict Mature Plants
Muskogee Crape Myrtle
Lagerstroemia indica x fauriei 'Muskogee'
Muskogee Crape Myrtle is a one of a kind crepe myrtle tree with lush lavender blooms and contrasting green leaves. This full sun loving, hybrid tree is packed with colorful flowers and blooms for up to six months. Unlike other crape myrtle trees, Muskogee is a fast growing tree and mildew resistant. Its rich chocolate-hued bark is sure to bring year round interest to any landscape or garden.
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Lavender Muskogee Crape Myrtle Tree for Sale Online
Muskogee Crape Myrtle features 6 to 12 inches long inflorescences (panicles) of lavender-pink flowers from mid-summer to early fall. Muskogee's foliage emerges reddish in spring, matures to dark green in summer, and turns orange to red in fall. Its cinnamon-colored bark is smooth and peels to a shiny light gray. Muskogee Crape Myrtle is one of several hybrids developed by the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., resistant to powdery mildew.
Muskogee Crape Myrtle has a broad and upright growing habit with small alternate leaves rounded at the base. Each cluster within the Muskogee Crape Myrtle has hundreds of light lavender flowers, and each cluster can range from 8 to 16 inches long. Each summer, Crape Myrtle Muskogee exfoliates its gray-brown colored bark in thin strips to expose a smooth and light brown colored bark.
Although crape myrtles are a staple in the Southeast United States, plants such as Muskogee Crape Myrtle are becoming increasingly common in the Northern areas such as St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and on Long Island. In the South, Crape myrtle Muskogee can easily be grown as a large woody shrub or trained as a small tree with a maximum size of 12 feet tall. The eye-catching trees continue to enhance landscapes allowing gardeners everywhere to relish in their pure beauty.
| Hardiness Zone: | 6-9 |
|---|---|
| Mature Height: | 8 to 12 feet |
| Mature Width: | 6 to 10 feet |
| Classification: | Tree form small (10 to 20 feet) |
| Sunlight: | Full sun |
| Habit: | Deciduous, densely branched, multi-stemmed summer through the first frost |
| Flower Color: | Soft lavender pink flowers in mid to late summer through the first frost |
| Foliage: | New growth emerges a rich dark green, changing to an equally vibrant orange-red 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 for a large containers on the patio |
How to Care for Muskogee Crape Myrtle
Before you buy a Muskogee Crape Myrtle tree, make sure to read about the care instructions that are required and recommended to keep this plant healthy and thriving.
How do I water Muskogee Crape Myrtles?
After back filling and lightly compacting the 50/50 mix of existing soil and compost give the Muskogee Crape Myrtle a good deep watering. This is not to be rushed, most of the water you put on the plant at first will run away from the plant until the soil is soaked.
A general rule of thumb is to count to 5 for every one gallon of pot size. For example a one gallon pot would be watered until you count to 5 a three gallon pot would be 15 and so on. We recommend checking your plant daily for the first week or so and then every other day there after. Water using the counting method for the first few weeks.
How do I mulch Muskogee Crape Myrtles?
We highly recommend that you mulch your Muskogee Crape Myrtle with either a ground hardwood mulch or a ground cypress mulch depending on your local availability. Any type of mulch will do but cypress or hardwood mulch will be of a higher quality and provide better nutrition overall as they break down.
Mulching helps to keep weeds away which will compete with your new Muskogee Crape Myrtle for water and nutrients. A 2 to 3 inch layer of mulch is sufficient, but remember not to cover any part of the stem of the plant with mulch. Its better to leave a one inch gap of space between the mulch and the stem or trunk of the plant.
How do I fertilize Muskogee Crape Myrtles?
Feeding your plants during the growing season is probably the single most forgotten part of growing healthy long lasting plants. We recommend feeding your plants in the very early spring and again in mid fall after all new growth has hardened off. Bio-tone starter fertilizer is the best product to use at the time of planting. We offer a one year warranty on our plants when you purchase bio-tone at checkout and use it per label instructions.
Crape myrtles tend to use more nitrogen than some other plant families. We recommend using an early spring fertilizer with a product such as Espoma Tree-tone for healthy foliage and stem growth.
Follow this up with an early summer application of Espoma Flower-Tone to promote a flush of beautiful flowers. Be careful with products such as miracle-grow as these products can burn newly planted plants when not used at the recommended rates. Slow-release fertilizer can help prevent rapid sucker growth that is vulnerable to diseases and insects.
How do I plant Muskogee Crape Myrtle?
We suggest when planting your newly purchased Muskogee Crape Myrtle plants that you dig a hole twice as wide as the root system, but not deeper. Depending on the quality of your existing soil you may need to add a locally sourced compost or topsoil to the back-fill soil. We do not recommend using straight topsoil for well drained soil that won't hold too much moisture and helps avoid root rot.
Adding compost or topsoil will help the young feeder roots to spread through the loose, nutrient rich soil, much easier than if you used solely the existing soil which more times than not will be hard and compacted.
The most common cause of plant death after transplanting is planting the new plant too deep. That is why we do not recommend planting in a hole any deeper than the soil line of the plant in the pot. A good rule is that you should still be able to see the soil the plant was grown in after back-filling the hole.
