A good and bad year here for wisteria this year... The Japanese one (planted August 2007) is blooming nicely for the first time; the Chinese one is disappointing. There are a couple of likely reasons for that - the 12-18" we took off the top this spring to shorten it to make it easier to prune removed a fair bit of flowering wood; I supect one or more of the frosts in early May damaged/killed buds; the unusually warm and dry winter, warm March, cold April and early May confused things a lot I think. The leaves are much, much further developed than usual so are obscuring the flowers. The flowering usually peaks somewhere around the 24-25 of May so maybe there's still some hope for a better show... Here's what things looked like this evening:

Both of them (from what I had read and seen locally, I expected the Japanese one to bloom later than the Chinese one but it started blooming first!):

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A closer look at the Japanese one:

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A closer look at the Chinese one - more flowers are visible in the (east) side-on view here than in the first picture which is looking down from the north.

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Compared to these pictures, the Chinese one is definitely having an off year!

May 16, 2010:

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May 31 2011 (compare how few leaves there are in this picture vs. the current state of things!):

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