Photo: Jerzy Opioła, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped · Wikimedia Commons

Bladdernut

Scientific name: Staphylea trifolia

Also called American bladdernut.

Drooping white bell flowers in May and papery inflated seed pods that rattle in the fall wind.

Be first when bladdernut is priced

Saplings ship bare-root or in a pot, usually 12 to 18 inches tall, in the dormant season, and their height and age are stated here with the price, once available.

We grow it as saplings and seed. One email when it is listed with prices, and nothing else. Or ask, and we reply with what is ready now. Live plants ship February to May and October to November.

Ask about this plant Email instead

Share: copy link

Showy flowersRareWildlife valueTolerates shadeTolerates wet soilWinter interest

Type: Shrub
Mature height: 8–15 ft
USDA zones: 4–8
Growth rate: Fast
Flowers: April to May
Fruit: Pods, August to October
First crop: 4 to 5 years (in quantity)
Mature spread: 15 ft
Sun: Part, Shade
Soil moisture: Average, Wet
Grows wild in: Stream banks, rich moist slopes and the forest understory
Native range: 32 states and the District of Columbia, north to Minnesota, south to Florida and west to Nebraska
List all 33
Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia
See what is native in your state

Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Bladdernut is an uncommon shrub of moist, shady stream banks and rich woods, striped green bark and all. It suckers into a loose thicket, tolerates heavy shade and flooding, and its curious inflated pods are a conversation piece. Underused because it is hard to find, not because it is hard to grow. Made for a collector's woodland garden, or for holding a damp bank under big trees.

Size, growth and what to expect

Bladdernut is a fast-growing shrub. Our growth estimator models it at nearly three feet a year in youth, its figure for a fast grower. Stems reach 10 to 15 feet, and a colony spreads 10 to 20 feet wide as the suckers run.

The drooping clusters of greenish-white bells open in April and May, each flower about a third of an inch long, and bees and butterflies work them. By late summer the flowers have become papery inflated pods 1 to 2 inches long, green at first and light brown by fall, hanging on into early winter. The young bark is smooth and green with pale streaks.

It grows wild from New England and Ontario west to Minnesota and Kansas and south to Florida, in bottomland woods and thickets along streams.

How to grow Bladdernut

Bladdernut belongs in part shade or full shade on average to wet ground: a stream bank, a low spot under big trees, the north side of a building. It takes brief flooding. The plant widens by suckers, so give it a 10 foot circle and room to drift.

Plant while dormant. Saplings come bare-root or potted. Open a wide, shallow hole, set the crown at grade, and use the soil you dug with nothing added. Keep mulch a few inches off the stems. Seed is slow and must not dry out. Sow it cleaned, outdoors in fall, in a bed screened against mice, and expect part of it to sit through a second winter. For a spring sowing, hold it damp at room temperature for three months and then in the refrigerator for three months.

Water through the first summer, especially where the site drains faster than a woodland floor. Rabbits and deer browse the soft shoots, so ring young plants with wire for two winters.

Bladdernut will not set seed with its own pollen, and a suckering patch is still one plant, so plant two or more seedlings from different parents. It spreads by root suckers into a loose colony, which is what you want on a bank and not in a small border. The inflated pods ripen tan and rattle all winter, and the striped bark shows best in winter. Cut damaged canes out after flowering.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

Sources (15)