Common Hoptree (Wafer Ash)

Size, growth and what to expect

Common hoptree tops out at 15 to 20 feet and spreads 10 to 20 feet. Our growth estimator models it at about a foot a year, its figure for a slow grower. Expect a modest pace.

The 2 to 3 inch clusters of fragrant yellow-green flowers open in May and June. The round papery wafers that follow are about an inch across and stay on the branches into winter. The name hoptree records an old use of the fruit in place of hops in brewing. It is called wafer ash for those wafer-like seeds, but it is no ash at all, and the emerald ash borer leaves it alone.

It grows wild from Ontario and New York south to Florida and west to Minnesota, in open woods, glades, ravines, thickets and rocky ground.

How to grow Common Hoptree

Common hoptree grows in part shade, full sun or deep shade under tall trees, on any well-drained soil from dry rock and sand to moist loam, limestone included. Sun makes it a dense bush, shade an open small tree. Set it 8 to 10 feet from a wall or walk, and that far apart in a hedge.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant dormant saplings from leaf fall until bud swell in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper, crown at the soil line, native soil back in, mulch clear of the stem. Seed comes in the wafer: pick the clusters in fall when they turn tan and sow whole wafers a quarter inch deep in a screened, mulched bed. Winter rots the wing and chills the seed, and seedlings come up in spring. For spring sowing, break the seed out of the wafer, which blocks germination in a refrigerator, and stratify it damp and cold three to four months. Sow shallow; seed buried an inch and a half down mostly never came up.

Water weekly the first summer if rain is short; after that it takes drought. Deer leave it alone, but cage the base low for two winters against rabbits and keep mulch thin so voles do not nest at the stem. Prune in late winter only to shape it; cut hard in sun, it regrows as a thick bush.

Growth is slow to medium. Most plants are male or female, and males outnumber females, so plant three to five seedlings if you want the wafers, which follow the flowers the same summer and hang until spring. Flies, wasps and small bees pollinate it, not wind. Expect leaf spots in a wet year, nothing worse.