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Yellow-leafed hop - Humulus lupulus 'Aureus'
Szczepan Marczyński
Hop (Humulus lupulus) is most often associated with beer as its fruit (commonly known as "a cone") is an indispensable ingredient for the production of this popular drink. Unfortunately it's less popular as a valuable, luxuriant garden climbing plant, especially its yellow-leafed variety 'Aureus'.
'Aureus' is a vigorous perennial with rough-textured, twining stems.
They attain a height of 6 m annually, and the plant can cover the area 2-3 m wide, creating in just a few weeks a golden wall of leaves and stems. The upper stems die out every autumn, but in spring new shoots appear from the underground part of the plant. Leaves, bright yellow through the whole vegetation period, are large, deeply-lobed (as those of grapevine) serrated and rough. Hop is a dioecious plant. 'Aureus' is a female clone and so it produces yellow cone-like flowers in autumn.
Hop grows best and produces the best leaf color in full sun.
It doesn't have any special soil requirements on condition that the soil has good water-retention capacity and is slightly moist to moist. Fertile soils make it grow more abundantly. Hop is frost hardy and can be successfully grown in the zones 5-8.
Humulus lupulus makes a good screening plant. It's perfect for both large and medium gardens, especially of a naturalistic design or for color combinations. The stems won't cling to a smooth surface (e.g. a wall), but its self twining habit means it will climb up all kinds of supports such as wires, stakes, poles etc.
Owing to its vigorous growth hop can easily cover in just a few weeks fences, trees, arbors, arches, pergolas and other supports or small buildings. However, as it's quite expansive and produces underground stolons, it shouldn't be planted in a small garden or next to valuable plants.
Downy mildew causing brown, drying spots on the leaf surface is the most dangerous of all the hop diseases. It affects especially the plants growing in shade or the ones that have their leaves often wetted. In a dry situation it's susceptible to the attack of spiders and aphids.
Exemplary label with photo and instruction
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Attention! On the market you can often encounter a yellow-leafed hop propagated from seed, whose leaves are more of a light green than of a bright yellow. That's why it's better to buy it from a reliable source that sells vegetatively propagated plants supplied with a colorful label with a detailed instruction for growing.
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