Confederate jasmine, or star jasmine, is one of the best-loved evergreen vines of the warm South, prized for glossy dark leaves and clouds of small, star-shaped, intensely fragrant flowers. The common form wears white blooms, but this selection, which Woodlanders offers as 'Mandianum' and which may be the cultivar 'Star of Toscana', opens flowers in shades of creamy to clear yellow, an unusual and welcome color in the tribe.
'Madison' is the cold-hardy Confederate jasmine, the selection that carries the beloved evergreen vine a full zone north of where the tribe usually stops. Vigorous and twining, with glossy dark leaves and the powerfully fragrant, white, star-shaped flowers that make star jasmine famous, this form has proved hardy into USDA zone 7, well beyond the reach of the standard Trachelospermum jasminoides.
Tricyrtis is a small genus of woodland lilies from the Himalayas and eastern Asia, and this plant, almost certainly Tricyrtis formosana, carries the whole strange charm of the group in a single late-season flower. The botanical name joins the Greek treis, three, with kyrtos, humped or swollen, for the three little nectar sacs that bulge at the base of each bloom, a detail worth crouching down to find. The species epithet formosana points to Formosa, the old name for Taiwan, where these toad lilies grow on shaded, humus-rich slopes. The common name is the odd one: garden lore holds that hunters of the Philippine forests once rubbed the flowers' juice on their hands to make frogs and toads easier to grab, and the freckled, amphibian mottling of the petals has kept the name ever since.
Tripterygium regelii is a big, rambling, almost vine-like shrub from the temperate woodlands of Japan, Korea, and Manchuria, closely related to the celebrated thunder god vine of Chinese medicine. The genus name is a piece of plain description: from the Greek treis, three, and pteryx, a wing, for the papery three-winged fruits that hang in pale green clusters after flowering. The species honors Eduard von Regel, the nineteenth-century botanist who directed the St. Petersburg botanical garden. The English name, Regel's threewingnut, keeps both the man and the winged nutlet in view.
This rare Hemlock from Yunnan Province in China was originally received from the Arnold Arboretum in Massachusetts. It had been obtained from China but was not expected to be hardy in Massachusetts. It proved to be very well adapted to semi-shady situations here in the Deep South where it has become a dark green graceful pyramidal tree. Woodlanders has probably been the first U.S. nursery to offer this tree.
Tulbaghia violacea, the plant gardeners know as society garlic, is a clump-forming perennial from the summer-dry grasslands of southern Africa, ranging from the Little Karoo through the Eastern Cape to KwaZulu-Natal. The genus honors Ryk Tulbagh, the eighteenth-century Dutch governor of the Cape of Good Hope, while the species name violacea simply means violet, for the color of the flowers. The common name is a small joke: the leaves carry a clear garlic scent, but a gentler, more sociable one than true garlic, said to be polite enough for company.
Hardiness
Zones 7–10
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
1–2 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, digestive health, immune support
Ugni molinae, the Chilean guava, is a small evergreen shrub of the myrtle family, native to the temperate forests of Chile and adjoining southern Argentina. Gardeners of an older generation will know the plant as Myrtus ugni, the name the shrub long circulated under. The genus name Ugni comes straight from uñi, the Mapuche word for the plant, while the species honors Juan Ignacio Molina, the Jesuit naturalist who first chronicled the flora of Chile; in the plant's homeland the shrub is simply murta or murtilla.
Vaccinium arboreum, the sparkleberry, is the giant of the blueberry clan, a large shrub or small tree native across the southeastern and south-central United States, from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas. The species name arboreum means tree-like, and an old specimen earns it, rising to twenty or twenty-five feet on a gnarled, contorted frame. The folk names sparkleberry and farkleberry both nod to the small, glossy, glinting black fruits, and the plant is sometimes called tree huckleberry or winter huckleberry for the leaves that linger late.
This evergreen creeping blueberry is a North Carolina State University selection from Lexington County, South Carolina. It has small shiny leaves but they are considerably larger than typical for the species. An excellent groundcover for moist sandy acid soil in a sunny of semi-shady location. Native to coastal Carolinas, this species is usually found where there is a high water table or seepage but where it does not flood.
The creeping blueberry is the ground-hugging cousin of the fruiting kinds, a low, evergreen, native groundcover of the Carolina coastal plain that trades height for reach. 'Well's Delight' is a North Carolina State University selection from the southeastern corner of that state, named for the late Dr. B.W. Wells, the pioneering North Carolina ecologist, and set apart by small, shiny leaves even finer than the usual for the species. The botanical name crassifolium means thick-leaved, for the firm little evergreen leaves that line the trailing stems.
Darrow's blueberry is the silver-leaved evergreen of the group, a low, fine-textured native of the pine flatwoods and sandy scrub from southern Georgia through Florida to eastern Louisiana. The species honors George M. Darrow, the United States Department of Agriculture scientist whose breeding work built much of the modern blueberry, and the wild plant has passed its own heat tolerance into many of today's Southern highbush cultivars. 'John Blue' is a North Carolina State University selection chosen for looks as much as fruit, and the leaves are the reason.
Darrow's blueberry is the fine-leaved evergreen of the Southern blueberries, a low, glaucous native of the sandy pinelands from Georgia to Florida, named for George M. Darrow, the United States Department of Agriculture scientist whose work built much of the modern blueberry. Most plants carry the usual blue-green foliage, but 'Rosa's Blush' was chosen for something showier: new growth flushed with generous pink tints that light up the shrub, a character strongest in plants from Highlands County, Florida, and noted among several clones in the North Carolina State University breeding program.
Darrow's blueberry is the small-leaved evergreen of the Southern blueberries, a low native of the sandy pinelands of the Deep South, named for George M. Darrow of the United States Department of Agriculture, whose breeding work shaped the modern blueberry. Most plants of the species carry blue-green foliage, but 'Sebring' is a clone Woodlanders found in Highlands County, Florida and selected for the very small, bright green leaves that give the shrub a fine, tidy texture all its own.
Elliott's blueberry is one of the finest of the wild Southern blueberries, a tall, multi-stemmed deciduous native reaching up to ten feet, with slender twigs and small, glossy green leaves. The species honors Stephen Elliott, the early nineteenth-century South Carolina botanist whose Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia remains a landmark of Southern natural history. The old country name mayberry nods to the fruit, which ripens early, sometimes as soon as May in the warm South.
Shiny blueberry is the little evergreen groundcover blueberry of the Southern Coastal Plain, a low, dense native rarely more than knee-high, spreading gently by rhizome into a fine, glossy-leaved mat. The species name myrsinites likens the small, lustrous leaves to those of myrtle, and the common name shiny blueberry says the same: the whole plant catches light on foliage barely an inch long.
Vaccinium sempervirens is one of the rarest plants in this catalog, an evergreen blueberry known in the wild from a single sandy corner of Lexington County, in the Sandhills of South Carolina. A true local endemic, the plant grows along Atlantic white cedar bogs and seepage slopes where the water table sits high and the sand stays acid, and to grow one is to hold a small piece of a landscape almost nobody has seen.
Deerberry is the odd one out among the wild Southern blueberries, a loose, variable native shrub of dry, sandy uplands, pinewoods, and old-field edges across the eastern and central United States. The flowers give the plant its botanical name: where most blueberries hide their stamens inside closed urns, deerberry opens wide, greenish-white bells with the yellow stamens thrust well beyond the petals, so the species is stamineum, of the stamens. The common name is plainer still, since deer are as fond of the ripe fruit as any creature in the woods.
