Clethra fargesii
Chinese Clethra
- Type
- Shrub
- Hardiness
- USDA Zones 5–8
- Sun
- Part Shade, Full Sun
- Soil
- Moist, Well-drained
- Mature size
- Height 6–10 Feet · Spread 4–6 Feet
- Growth rate
- Moderate
- Seasonality
- Deciduous
This variety is no actively in production in our propagation house and may not return to our catalogue. We maintain this page purely for reference and archival purposes. If you would like to grow this plant, tell us. Your interest helps guide what we bring back.
For a larger installation or commercial project, write hello@woodlanders.net.
Clethra fargesii is the Chinese cousin of our native summersweets, a graceful deciduous shrub from the mountain woodlands of central and western China, gathered and named for the French missionary-botanist Paul Farges. Kin to the better-known Clethra barbinervis, the Chinese clethra stays a little shorter and carries dark, glossy green leaves, broadest through the middle and sharply toothed, that color bronze-red to maroon before they fall.
The flowers are the summer event: long racemose panicles, five to seven inches each, of pure white bloom that arrives in mid to late summer when little else among the shrubs is flowering, and that pours out a heavy, sweet fragrance rich in nectar for butterflies and bees. As the years pass, the trunks develop the smooth, marbled, cinnamon-brown bark that peels in the manner of the whole tribe, giving the plant a second season of quiet interest once the leaves are down.
Give the Chinese clethra the cool, semi-shaded, evenly moist conditions of a woodland edge or a sheltered border in acid, humus-rich soil, out of the dry summer heat and drought the shrub does not relish. Site where the fragrant panicles can be caught on the air and, in time, the peeling bark read at close range. Lovely among ferns, hellebores, and other shade companions, and a refined change from the native summersweets for the collector.
White, fragrant, 5-7 inch panicles, mid to late summer