The Node
Woodlanders' resource center for plant education, how-tos, garden inspiration, and news.
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Pollinators
12 articles
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The Shrimp Plant, Closely Read: Everything You Are Looking At Is a Leaf
Plant Highlight · Justicia brandegeeana · Mexico to the Gulf South. The shrimp plant is one of the most recognizable shrubs in the warm South, and almost nobody who grows...
Mexican Flame Vine (Senecio confusus): How to Grow and Overwinter at the Cold Edge
How-To & Propagation · Mexican Flame Vine · The Southeast. A tropical vine that blazes orange from June until frost, grown at the cold edge of the map, and how...
Chinese Fringetree (Chionanthus retusus): The Tree That Flowers Like Rice
Plant Highlights · Chinese Fringetree · East Asia. For about two weeks in late spring, a small tree from Korea, Japan and China disappears under a fall of white so...
Myrcianthes fragrans: The Shrub That Comes in Twos
Plant Highlight · Myrcianthes fragrans · Florida and the Caribbean. Twin berries on a forked stalk, two common names that disagree about the plant entirely, and a nutmeg scent hiding...
Hibiscus mutabilis: White by Morning, Red by Dark
Plant Highlight · Hibiscus mutabilis · China and the American South. The cotton rose spends a single day working through three colors, white at dawn, pink by noon, red by...
The Sage That Saves the Best for Last
Plant Highlight: Salvia leucantha. When the summer border has said everything, Mexican bush sage finally speaks, in a low velvet purple that bees and hummingbirds wait all season to hear.
The Blueberry That Grew Into a Tree
Plant Highlight · Sparkleberry · The Southeast. Vaccinium arboreum took the blueberry blueprint, added a trunk, cinnamon bark, and a taste for dry limestone, and became a small ornamental tree.
Where the Black Gum Wants to Stand
Landscape Design · Black Gum · The Southeast. The tupelo thrives in standing water and dry clay alike, which makes siting the tree a matter of listening to the ground...
The Bottlebrush That Learned to Take a Frost
A field guide to the cold-hardy bottlebrushes: which Callistemon species take a Carolina winter, how the genus works, siting and care, and the selection Woodlanders made in Aiken.
The Hibiscus That Never Opens: Malvaviscus arboreus and the Slow Seduction of Turk's Cap
15 min · Ethnobotany, hummingbird ecology, and the Southern pass-along plant that blooms when everything else has given up.
Cephalanthus occidentalis: Architect of the Shallow Water World
Woodlanders Botanical Essay Architect of the Shallow Water World Cephalanthus occidentalis, the quiet engineer of wetlands, and what it means to be an edge species in an edge era....
Milkweed and the Memory of Wings: A Garden Meditation on Asclepias
By a porch-shadowed field, where the air is sweet with summer clover and the cottony drift of seed rides the wind like the ghosts of dreams, the milkweed blooms. And...
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