Yaupon holly is a small-leaved evergreen shrub or small tree of the southeastern United States, native from coastal Virginia south to Texas. Adaptable to a fault, salt tolerant, drought tolerant, and willing in sun or shade, yaupon takes shearing as gracefully as any boxwood, which has made the species a Southern mainstay for hedges, topiary, and clipped evergreen structure. The tiny white spring flowers are easy to miss, but the bees do not miss them, and on female plants they give way to a heavy crop of small, translucent berries that hang on well into winter.
Hardiness
Zones 7–10
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
8–10 ft.
Spread
6–8 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
general wellness, mental & emotional well-being, detoxification & cleansing
Yaupon is the small-leaved evergreen holly of the southeastern United States, native along the coastal plain from Virginia to Texas and a member of the holly family, Aquifoliaceae. Salt tolerant, drought tolerant, and willing in sun or shade, the species shears as cleanly as boxwood and has long been a Southern mainstay for hedges, screens, and topiary. This is the straight male form: no berries, since male hollies never fruit, but a dense, dependable evergreen and the pollen source that every berried female yaupon needs.
Hardiness
Zones 7–10
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
10–20 ft.
Spread
8–12 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
general wellness, mental & emotional well-being, detoxification & cleansing
Yaupon is the small-leaved evergreen holly of the Southeast, native along the coastal plain from Virginia to Texas and a member of the holly family, Aquifoliaceae. The wild plant is a broad, twiggy shrub, so a yaupon that grows straight up like a green column is a genuine oddity. 'Will Fleming' is exactly that: a male selection with a strict fastigiate habit, reaching twelve to fifteen feet tall on a base only two or three feet wide, a living exclamation mark carrying the fine yaupon leaf all the way up.
Hardiness
Zones 7–10
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
12–15 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
general wellness, mental & emotional well-being, detoxification & cleansing
The Indio mandarinquat is one of those happy accidents that citrus breeding throws up now and then, a natural cross between a mandarin (Citrus reticulata) and a kumquat (Citrus japonica) that borrows the best of both parents. From the mandarin come the size, the deep orange color, and the perfume; from the kumquat come the sweet, tender, wholly edible rind and a welcome measure of cold tolerance. The fruits hang like small golden lanterns against dark evergreen leaves through winter, oblong and glossy, and the whole tree carries a poise that belies how easy the plant is to grow.
Juglans nigra, the eastern black walnut, is one of the great trees of eastern North America, a towering, long-lived hardwood native from the Appalachians and Midwest to the Mississippi Valley, most at home in deep, rich, moist but well-drained soils along river bottoms and fertile uplands. Large pinnate leaves cast a broad, airy shade in summer, leaf out late in spring, and drop early in fall to a soft gold, making way for the tree's most famous gift, the crop of hard-shelled nuts.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Full Sun
Height
50–80 ft.
Spread
40–60 ft.
Bloom
Green
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
topical applications, digestive health, detoxification & cleansing, general wellness
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.
No plant carries a heavier freight of story than Laurus nobilis, the bay laurel of the Mediterranean and the original laurel of the victor's crown. The genus name is simply the classical Latin for the tree, and the epithet nobilis means noble or renowned, a fair description of a plant whose leaves once crowned poets, athletes, and returning generals. The whole vocabulary of achievement still leans on this tree: a baccalaureate, a poet laureate, and the warning not to rest on one's laurels all trace back to the wreath of bay. In Greek myth the laurel was born of unrequited love, when the nymph Daphne, fleeing Apollo, was changed into a laurel tree by her father the river god; ever after the god wore the leaves in her memory, and the tree became sacred to him.
Luma apiculata, the Chilean myrtle, is grown above all for the extraordinary bark: smooth, sinuous trunks in warm cinnamon-orange that peel to reveal cream beneath, a living sculpture that glows in low winter light. An evergreen of the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, the plant hails from the temperate rainforests of Chile and neighboring Argentina, where whole groves, most famously the Bosque de Arrayanes on Lake Nahuel Huapi, are built of these twisting, apricot-barked trunks.
Malvaviscus arboreus, affectionately known as Turk's cap, has charmed gardeners for generations with vibrant, coiled blooms that never quite open, each red flower staying furled like a little turban, which is exactly how the plant earned its name. A close cousin of the hibiscus in the mallow family, Malvaceae, this tough, subtropical shrub carries a story as rich as the scarlet flowers, and two more common names besides: wax mallow and sleeping hibiscus.
This is the uncommon pink-flowered Turk's cap, a soft-toned form of the familiar scarlet Malvaviscus arboreus, a subtropical relative of the hibiscus in the mallow family, Malvaceae. The flowers carry the same charming quirk as the red kind: two to three inches long, they never open flat like a hibiscus but stay furled in a little turban, glowing here in clear pink rather than red.
Malvaviscus drummondii is the small Turk's cap, the wild, native cousin of the larger Mexican wax mallow and, for many Southern gardeners, the better plant of the two. A relative of the hibiscus in the mallow family, Malvaceae, this shrubby perennial is native to Texas, the Gulf Coast states, and on south, and grows wild in the dappled shade of woodland edges and stream banks where few other bright flowers will bloom.
'Pam Puryear' is the soft-pink small Turk's cap, a lovely departure from the usual fire-engine red of this tough native mallow. The furled, never-quite-open flowers keep the charming Turk's cap form, less than two inches long and produced without pause through the hot months, but here they glow a gentle shell pink that reads cool and quiet in the summer border.
This is the white-flowered small Turk's cap, an uncommon and quietly beautiful form of the normally scarlet Malvaviscus drummondii. The flowers keep the familiar furled, never-opening Turk's cap shape, under two inches long and produced steadily through the hot months, but open in clean, soft white rather than red, a cool and unexpected note in the summer garden.
The Meiwa kumquat is the sweet one, the kumquat you can pop whole into your mouth and eat skin and all. A small, tidy, evergreen citrus, Fortunella crassifolia carries round, bright orange fruit a little over an inch across, and where most kumquats offer a sweet rind wrapped around sharply sour pulp, the Meiwa softens the contrast: the peel is thick and honey-sweet, the flesh only mildly tart, so the whole fruit eats like candy off the branch.
Monarda fistulosa, wild bergamot, is one of the great native perennials of the North American prairie, a hardy, aromatic member of the mint family loved for showy heads of lavender-pink and for a fragrance like oregano crossed with mint. The species grows wild in meadows, prairies, and open woods across most of the continent, and brings both vivid summer color and a deep well of history to the garden.
The red mulberry, Morus rubra, is the eastern woodlands' own mulberry, a medium to large deciduous tree native across the eastern United States from New England to Texas. The genus name Morus is simply the old Latin word for mulberry, and rubra, red, points less to the ripe fruit, which darkens to near black, than to the reddish cast of the young growth. Broad, heart-shaped, sandpaper-rough leaves clothe a wide, rounded crown, and where a female tree grows the summer branches hang heavy with blackberry-like fruit.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
40–60 ft.
Spread
25–35 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
digestive health, topical applications, general wellness
Myrcianthes fragrans is a member of the myrtle family native to the hammocks and coastal scrub of Florida and the Caribbean, the same botanical neighborhood as guava and allspice, which says something about the family character and the quality of the fragrance involved. Crush a leaf and the scent is immediate and specific: nutmeg with a citrus edge, clean and resinous in a way that makes the plant worth encountering even out of flower. The tiny, deep green leaves hold the aromatic oils responsible, and keep that quality year-round.
Myrica rubra, the Chinese bayberry or yangmei, is a fruiting evergreen tree from the misty mountains of East Asia, revered for centuries across China and Japan for tangy-sweet berries and an elegant, shapely form. Imagine cherries and cranberries with a botanical lovechild that had the moodiness of a plum and the antioxidant punch of a superfruit, and something close to yangmei would be the result. The current stock is female, tissue-cultured clones of a named selection.
Myrtus communis, the true myrtle, is a dense evergreen shrub of the Mediterranean, clothed in small, glossy, aromatic leaves and starry white flowers, and few garden plants carry so much history. Sacred to Aphrodite and to her Roman counterpart Venus, myrtle has stood for love, beauty, and marriage since antiquity, woven into bridal wreaths from ancient Greece to Victorian England, and a sprig from Queen Victoria's own bouquet founded a myrtle whose descendants still supply royal wedding flowers today.
Hardiness
Zones 8–11
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
6–9 ft.
Spread
6–8 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, topical applications, digestive health
The Nagami kumquat is the easiest citrus most gardeners will ever grow, and the only one meant to be eaten peel and all. Clusters of small, oval, sunset-orange fruit hang against dense, glossy evergreen foliage, each one a burst of contrast: a sweet, tender rind wrapped around bright, tart pulp. Pop them whole for a sweet-and-sour snap, candy the rinds, slice them into a salad, or simmer the winter harvest into jewel-toned marmalade.
