Please can someone identify?

lizziec1988

Hi,
please can someone name this plant and also let me know if you can divide it? Thanks 

lizziec1988

It helps if I upload the photo 

AnniD

It looks to me like Spirea japonica "Goldflame", as far as l know you can't divide it as it's a shrub, but you could give it a good pruning to around 15cm high.

Kitty 2

A spirea. Possibly a goldflame or firelight ???

Bilje

I have one but its name is sadly lost..had "princess" in it if I remember correctly. Anyway it is a spirea. I live in the NE and mine had just been hacked back to 4-6 inches in old money. I do his every year and it grows back no problem with fresh foliage and pink flowers later in the year. Although I haven't, you can take cuttings from the new growth if you want more, as AnniD said you can't divide it.

nutcutlet

Suckering shrubs can be dug up and sawed through the middle. May not  be good horticultural practice and hard work bit it can be done

Rubytoo

@Bilje Looks like there are a couple of Princesses.
Little Princess has pale pink flowers with a dark "eye".
Golden Princess has a light leaf colour and darker pink flowers.
If you put spirea princess into a search engine it should bring them up, there may be more Princesses out there.

Our Spirea ( the white one, Bridal wreath or S.X vanhouttei?) that suckers. I think that might have a different habit?
We had a later flowering variety very common loud pink one growing here when we moved in. I cut it back and it put up lots of fresh suckery kind of growth although it had been left for a few years and looked more like a single woody framework. It produced lots of new stems.
Perhaps you could experiment a bit @lizziec1988

lizziec1988 said:

 helps if I upload the photo 

Try some cuttings too.
It looks very pretty if it is Goldflame I can see why.

Bilje

Thanks Rubytoo....it was Golden Princess. It grows to about 18". I'm not too fond of it as I find the flowers are at odds with the goldy/green leaves, I'll treat it to a label haha. 

lizziec1988

So on the grounds mine is about 4ft have I let it get too big? Should it be much smaller? 

Obelixx

No.  It's a living shrub which grows.  As indicated in a post above you can prune it.

Use a pair of clean, sharp secateurs to take the stems back by half their length, cutting just above a pair of leaves.   Then stand back and look again and remove any stems that are broken, too congested or crossing and rubbing others.

Give it a feed of pelleted chicken manure or blood fish and bone and it will reward you with fresh growth, fresh foliage and flowers later on.   You can prune it again in future when it gets too big or tangled for its space.  The best time is early to mid spring so after the worst winter frosts but early enough for the new shoots to mature and produce flowers in mid-summer. 

Valleysgirl

I have 3 Spirea goldflames  just this week given them a good haircut. My OH has a habit in the Summer when he sees seed heads sometimes he just scatters some over a small tray of mpc, and he does it with other seed heads low and behold I've got a few seedlings potted on, it's all free so why not. Found some cowslips, and Tall red primula (that's what he wrote on the white marker)seedling growing as well so their moved on into cells. It's worth a try just wait till the seed heads are ready - experiment why not.