"Ceanothus concha" vs "Ceanothus standard" - height?

Hi Lilyan, the standard part simply describes the plants trained form and is not the variety name like 'Concha'.

If there is no variety name (usually surrounded on each side by an apostrophe then your only hope to guage the height would be to take a picture of the foliage and I may be able to guess which of the fifteen or so common types it could be :)

Hi Fractal, thanks very much for your reply. Here are a few pics, I hope they will be helpful to identify the actual type. As you can see from the first picture the plant has been "lollypopped", that's why I was led to believe it was a concha, as I know conchas can be trained into small tree shapes (which is what I need to achieve). But the tag (3rd pic) does not provide any useful information to me. It says "ceanothus standard - blue blossom", but from what I gathered on the Internet, "blue blossom" is a quite short creeping variety and does not seem to have anything to do with the plant in the pictures... I believe the information on the tag is too generic. Any chance you can help?

Well one thing is, is that its not 'Concha'. The leaves are too broad for that variety.

I suspect that this will be one of the less vigorous types which would be more suitable to be grown as a standard.

Ceanothus 'Blue Cushion' is a strong candidate. The flower colour is quite deep too as in your picture label. This usually grows to 3ft (out and up) so is more suitable as a standard than the 6-10ft'ers you often see.

There are a couple more smaller types such as Ceanothus thyrisiflorus 'Repens' but I'll stick to 'Blue Cushion'

ps, Ceanothus are a bit "gimmicky" grown as standards. Regular clipping reduces their flowering and their wood is very brittle. If the top gradually increases in size over time (even with the light clipping), a strong wind can snap the head off. The reason you can't clip too hard is because Ceanothus as a rule will not re-sprout from heavy older wood unfortunately and of course as I say above you will reduce the flowering.

Many many thanks Fractal, you have been very helpful indeed! That's a shame, I was really hoping it was a Concha. I saw one trained as a tree nearby (see additional pic), it's about 2.5 meters tall and the same in spread, and in Spring it's a real splendour, a blue cloud. I guess I will have to start again my search for a Concha that is at least a couple of years old, finding a mature specimen revealed to be quite difficult as they say it's a short-lived plant (10-15 years)... Thanks again! Just a clarification: does "grown as a standard" mean grown in a tree shape?

Yes, grown as a standard can be said to mean a tree in the sense that it has a single main stem.

That photo is a good example of one of the more vigorous types (quite possibly bought as a standard) that has continued to grow larger.