The Chinese flame tree is a fast-growing, upright ornamental of coarse, handsome structure, casting medium shade and broadening with age into a rounded crown of twenty to forty feet. A member of the soapberry family (Sapindaceae) native to southern China, Koelreuteria bipinnata carries large, twice-pinnate compound leaves that give the canopy a light, ferny texture through the growing season before turning soft yellow in fall.
The goldenrain tree is a deciduous member of the soapberry family (Sapindaceae), native to China and Korea and long cultivated across eastern Asia. Growing to a rounded twenty-five to thirty-five feet, the tree carries handsome pinnate compound leaves that cast a light, dappled shade, and in early to midsummer, later toward the north, the branches hang with large, airy panicles of small golden-yellow flowers, a soft rain of gold across the crown and the source of the common name goldenrain tree.
'Woodlanders Low Form' is a rare, shrubby selection of the goldenrain tree (Koelreuteria paniculata), a compact form that trades the usual rounded canopy for a low, dense frame of ten to twelve feet. The elegant, pinnate compound leaves and the showy summer panicles of small, bright yellow flowers are all present, simply gathered into a modest footprint that suits a small garden far better than the full species.
Seashore mallow is an erect, branching herbaceous perennial of the cotton family (Malvaceae), the same clan as hibiscus, hollyhock, and cotton, and the kinship shows in the flowers. Native to the brackish and salt marshes of the eastern United States, from New York and Delaware south to Florida and Texas, the species carries hibiscus-like blooms from midsummer well into fall, each a clear five-petaled cup around a central column of fused stamens. This selection, 'Alba', trades the usual soft pink for pure, clean white.
Among crape myrtles, Lagerstroemia fauriei is the aristocrat grown as much for bark as for bloom. A small, multi-stemmed, deciduous tree from Yakushima Island in southern Japan, first brought to botanical attention in the 1950s, the species reaches a graceful twenty-five to thirty-five feet with a rounded, vase-shaped crown. The summer flowers are white, carried in airy terminal panicles that are smaller and more delicate than the heavy trusses of the familiar Lagerstroemia indica.
'Bayou Marie' is a compact crape myrtle from the Dixie Series, a group of dwarf selections, chosen by David Chopin of Washington, Pennsylvania and introduced by Hines Nursery in California, in the same series as the purple 'New Orleans'. The flowers are the draw: abundant clusters of crinkled, crepe-textured pink blooms, each petal finished with a darker red to lavender edge that gives the whole shrub a lively, two-toned sparkle through the heat of summer.
'New Orleans' is a purple-flowered dwarf crape myrtle from the Dixie Series, a group that Michael Dirr, in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, describes as the miniature weeping crape myrtles for their low, softly cascading habit. The summer flowers are the rich violet-purple that gardeners rarely find at this small scale, crinkled and crepe-textured, borne in profusion across a mound of no more than two to three feet.
'Pixie White' is a true miniature crape myrtle, a low, compact selection that trades the usual upright tree for a small, spreading, often weeping mound. Through the warm season the plant covers the fine green foliage with clear, clean white flowers, the crinkled, crepe-textured blooms that name the whole clan, at a scale that fits the smallest garden.
'Pocomoke' is one of the smallest crape myrtles in cultivation, a dense, dwarf mound released by the U.S. National Arboretum in 1998 from the breeding program of Dr. Donald Egolf. A hybrid of the common crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) and the Japanese species (Lagerstroemia fauriei), 'Pocomoke' belongs to the group of Arboretum introductions named for Native American tribes and rivers, and carries the deep rose-pink flowers that set the selection apart at such a tiny scale.
Lagerstroemia limii is the crepe myrtle almost nobody grows, and that is precisely the reason to seek the plant out. Rare in gardens and known mostly to breeders and botanic collections, this Chinese species trades the familiar look of the summer crepe myrtle for something bolder and stranger: broad, blue-green leaves far larger than those of the common sort, and open, pyramidal panicles of lavender-pink bloom carried through the warm months.
The Lakeland limequat is a citrus lover's answer to cold: a compact, productive hybrid that pairs the hardiness of the kumquat with the bright, tropical punch of Key lime. One of three limequats bred by W. T. Swingle of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Florida in 1909 and named for the town of Lakeland, this cross (Citrus x floridana) joins the West Indian, or Key, lime with the round Marumi kumquat (Fortunella japonica). The result carries intense citrus flavor on a plant that thrives well beyond the usual citrus belt.
Few tender shrubs work as hard for as long as the lantanas, and Lantana camara 'Hybrida' distills the whole genus down to a single clear note of yellow. The species belongs to the verbena family, Verbenaceae, and hails from the West Indies and the warm reaches of Mexico south through tropical America, where the plant scrambles along roadsides and clearings in a haze of nectar and butterflies. The genus name is a borrowed one: Renaissance botanists lifted 'Lantana' from an old Latin name for the wayfaring tree, Viburnum lantana, whose domed flower clusters the lantana blooms happen to echo. The epithet camara is murkier, glossed variously as a vaulted chamber or a small boat, the true meaning long since lost to the record.
Every so often a plant arrives not from a breeder's bench but from a neighbor's yard, and Lantana camara 'Miss Huff' is one of those happy accidents. The selection was found in cultivation near Athens, Georgia, in the garden of the Miss Huff for whom the plant is named, and introduced to the trade by the former Goodness Grows Nursery. What set this lantana apart was cold tolerance: where most of the tribe sulk and die at the first hard freeze, 'Miss Huff' has proven the hardiest lantana in commerce, with well-established clumps shrugging off brief dips to a few degrees below zero and returning faithfully from the root even in zone 7.
Where the shrubby lantanas stand up, Lantana montevidensis lies down and travels. This is the trailing lantana, a low, weeping member of the verbena family, Verbenaceae, native to the warm grasslands of southern South America, from southern Brazil across Uruguay and Paraguay into Argentina. The species carries a place name in the epithet: montevidensis means of Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital near which the plant was first gathered and described, so the botanical name is really a small geography lesson tucked into Latin.
There are plants that offer fragrance, and then there are plants that conjure memory. Lavandula dentata, with silvery, sawtoothed leaves and near ever-blooming lavender plumes, belongs firmly to the second kind, a bearer of the sort of scent that lingers in a sun-warmed linen chest or in the folds of a well-worn book left on a porch rail.
Hardiness
Zones 8–11
Light
Full Sun
Height
2–3 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
mental & emotional well-being, topical applications, respiratory support, digestive health
Lavandula × intermedia is the lavender that finally makes sense of the Southeast. A natural and cultivated cross between English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) and spike lavender (Lavandula latifolia), the plant is known in Provence as lavandin, and there the sterile, vigorous hybrid has long been the mainstay of the perfume fields, prized for a heavier yield of fragrant oil than either parent alone. The name records that middle ground: intermedia, intermediate, a lavender poised between the sweet refinement of the English kind and the camphorous punch of the spike.
Hardiness
Zones 5–9
Light
Full Sun
Height
2–3 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
mental & emotional well-being, topical applications, respiratory support
Few late-summer plants command a border like Leonotis leonurus, the lion's ear of the South African veld. Tall square stems, the signature of the mint family, Lamiaceae, rise five feet and more before breaking into tier upon tier of burnt-orange flowers, each whorl circling the stem like a ruff. The velvety, curved tubes are the source of both common names, lion's ear and lion's tail, and the botany agrees: Leonotis comes from the Greek for lion's ear, and leonurus for lion's tail.
Hardiness
Zones 8–11
Light
Full Sun
Height
4–6 ft.
Spread
2–4 ft.
Bloom
Orange
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, pain relief, topical applications, general wellness
Leucothoe populifolia, still fondly called Agarista populifolia by those who knew the plant before the name changed, is the giant of a genus otherwise built low to the ground. Where most leucothoes hug the shade at knee height, this one climbs, sending up tall, erect stems that arch at the tips into a fountain of glossy evergreen leaves, and given years and room the shrub can pass for a small multi-stemmed tree of twelve to fifteen feet.
Leucothoe racemosa, the sweetbells of Eastern wetland edges, is a fine native shrub too seldom planted. Found wild across the eastern United States in acidic woodland soils that stay damp but never flood, the plant grows upright and loosely branched to six or eight feet, deciduous to semi-evergreen depending on the winter. Botanists now file the species under the name Eubotrys racemosa, though the older Leucothoe is the name most gardeners still use.
Liatris spicata, the blazing star or gayfeather, sends up rockets of feathery purple in the heart of summer, one of the great vertical accents of the North American prairie. The species is native to the moist meadows, prairies, and wet savannas of eastern North America, where the flower spikes once rose in their thousands among the tall grasses. Set against those horizontal sweeps of grass, the erect, bottlebrush spikes give any planting a jolt of structure and color.
Hardiness
Zones 3–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
2–4 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
immune support, respiratory support, detoxification & cleansing, digestive health
