Chaste Tree (Hemp or Wild Pepper Tree)
Vitex agnus-castus (VERBENACEAE)
Planting and Growing Chaste Trees
You’ll find everything you need to know to plant and grow chaste trees, hemp trees, or wild pepper trees in the accompanying table’s tabs:
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- Flowers, foliage, and fruit of chaste trees, hemp trees, or wild pepper trees
- Growing conditions for chaste trees, hemp trees, or wild pepper trees
- When to plant chaste trees, hemp trees, or wild pepper trees
- How to plant chaste trees, hemp trees, or wild pepper trees
- How to prune chaste trees, hemp trees, or wild pepper trees
- Watering, fertilizing, and care of chaste trees, hemp trees, or wild pepper trees
- Landscape uses of chaste tree (hemp or wild pepper tree)
- Pest and disease control for chaste tree (hemp or wild pepper tree)
Growing Chaste Trees
Several cultivars of fast- to medium-growing, broad, spreading, deciduous, frequently multitrunked, shrubby trees, 20–25 ft. (6–7.5 m) tall and wide, with deep green, lobed, fragrant leaves, to 4 in. (10 cm) long, as 5–7 fan-shaped leaflets, with gray undersides.
Cultivars include Vitex agnus-castus ‘Alba’, ‘Latifolia’, ‘Rosea’, and ‘Silver Spire’.
Chaste Tree Planting and Care Guide
Flowers and Fruit
Many fragrant, spikelike, blue, pink, purple, red, clustered flowers, to 1 ft. (30 cm) long, in summer, form small, berrylike fruit in autumn.
Best Climates
U.S.D.A. Plant Hardiness Zones 6–11, depending on cultivar.
Soil Type and Fertility
Damp, well-drained soil. Fertility: Rich–average. 6.5–7.5 pH. Best in hot-summer climates.
Where and How to Plant
Full sun. Space 5 ft. (1.5 m) apart in zones 6–8; space 8–12 ft. (2.4–3.7 m) apart in zones 9–11.
Proper Care
Easy. Allow soil surface to dry between waterings until established; drought tolerant thereafter. Mulch in cold-winter climates. Prune severely to shrublike form in zones 6–8, moderately in zones 9–11. Propagate by cuttings, seed.
About This Species
Good choice for accents, beds, borders, containers, fencelines, walls in arid, Asian, small-space gardens, tropical. Good for cutting, drying, sachets, and potpourris. Pest and disease resistant.