Woodlanders has long been a leader in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and the 'Razzlequat' is one of the odder and hardier of the lot. The plant is a cross between the Australian desert lime, Eremocitrus glauca, a tough, drought- and cold-tolerant native of the arid Australian interior, and, most likely, the familiar 'Meyer' lemon. From the desert lime parent come thorny, wiry branches, small narrow gray-green leaves, and a hardiness and drought tolerance rare among citrus; from the lemon come size and flavor.
A seldom-seen species with old-world charm, Abelia chinensis is a deciduous shrub native to China and one of the foundational parents of the widely grown Abelia x grandiflora. Far less common in American gardens than its hybrid offspring, the true species offers its own quiet distinctions: larger foliage, a fuller habit, and a long summer season of bloom that makes it a thoughtful choice for collectors and pollinator gardeners alike.
Abeliophyllum is a genus of a single species, first described from Korea in 1919 and grown in Western gardens since the 1930s, when it earned an Award of Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. It belongs to the olive family beside lilac and forsythia, and in the wild it clings on at only a handful of Korean sites, where it is now protected by law as an endangered plant. This is the white-flowered species itself, the parent of the better-known pink form.
Abeliophyllum is a genus of exactly one species, a quiet distinction it has held since botanists first described it from Korea in 1919. It belongs to the olive family alongside lilac and true forsythia, and in the wild it survives at only a handful of sites in the Korean hills, where it is now protected by law as an endangered plant. By the 1930s it had reached gardens in Europe and North America and earned an Award of Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society, and collectors have cherished it ever since. 'Roseum' is the blush-pink form of that rarity.
Espino is the thorn tree of the South American dry country, the signature shrub of central Chile's espinal, where it grows so thickly alongside the Chilean wine palm that it gives whole landscapes their character. Its range runs on through Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Spiny and twiggy, armed with stiff, pale, almost-white thorns, it is handsome from a distance and best handled with gloves. Botanists now file it under Vachellia, though the gardening world still knows it as Acacia caven.
Many of the finest ornamentals for the southern garden come from the deserts of the Southwest, and this Chihuahuan legume is a quietly handsome example. Acacia neovernicosa is an upright, spreading, thorny shrub clothed in twice-compound leaves so finely divided that the whole plant takes on a soft, smoky texture. The foliage carries a faint varnish, sticky to the touch, which gives the species both its botanical name and its common one, viscid acacia. In spring the branches are studded with small golden puffballs of bloom, abundant and sweetly fragrant, loud with bees on a warm morning.
Acacia visco, now placed by botanists in the genus Parasenegalia, is a graceful, fast-growing tree from the high country of northern Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru, where it is known simply as visco or viscote. The name nods to the sticky, resinous sap the tree exudes. Unusually among its thorny relatives it is thornless, with a light, open crown of ferny, twice-divided leaves that cast a dappled, forgiving shade.
Acer cissifolium is one of the trifoliate maples, a small deciduous tree whose leaves, divided into three coarsely toothed leaflets, look more like those of an ivy or a vine than of a maple, hence the common names ivy-leaved and vine-leaved maple. The species is native to the cool mountain forests of Japan, where these trees grow into an upright oval that broadens with age to a wide, rounded crown. Michael Dirr called the plant "extremely rare in cultivation but certainly worthy of consideration," and that judgment still holds.
A medium to large deciduous shrub closely related to the native buttonbush, Adina rubella wears smaller leaves and bears similar but daintier flowers: round, scented heads of pale pink and white, each bristling with styles into a small Sputnik, carried over a long season from early summer well into fall. The pincushion blooms draw bees and butterflies just as the buttonbushes do, and an open, arching habit gives the shrub a fine-textured grace.
Sweet almond verbena is grown for one glorious thing above all: scent. From midsummer until hard frost, Aloysia virgata tips every branch with slender spikes of small white flowers that pour out an intoxicating vanilla-almond fragrance, strongest in the late afternoon and evening and carrying clear across a garden. Butterflies and hummingbirds work the spikes all season.
Amorpha fruticosa, the false indigo bush, is the largest and most widespread of the native false indigos, a fast, open, deciduous shrub that carries long spires of tiny deep blue-purple flowers, each lit with a single vivid orange anther, at the branch tips in late spring and early summer. From a suckering base rise arching stems six to twelve feet tall, clothed in soft, ferny, pinnate leaves that give off a clean, resinous scent when crushed. In full bloom the whole shrub seems to smoke with color, and the flower spikes hum with bees.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
6–12 ft.
Spread
6–12 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
digestive health, general wellness, pain relief, topical applications
Madeira vine is a fast, twining, deciduous climber with fleshy, heart-shaped leaves and sprays of tiny, fragrant cream-white flowers in late summer and fall. Anredera cordifolia climbs by winding tuberous stems, and a warty crop of aerial tubers along the stems, some as large as a small potato, is the surest mark of the plant and a ready means of increase.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
10–20 ft.
Spread
6–10 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Vine
Traditional use
topical applications, reproductive health, general wellness
Swamp milkweed brings beauty and biodiversity to the moist garden. Asclepias incarnata is a native perennial prized for domed clusters of rosy pink, vanilla-scented flowers and for a vital role in feeding pollinators, native to wet meadows, streambanks, and lowland prairies across much of North America. The plant takes happily to rain gardens, wet soils, and sunny borders alike, a natural for the ecologically minded gardener.
The white-flowered form of swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata 'Ice Ballet' carries the same upright, well-mannered habit as the species but trades rosy pink for clusters of pure, cool white, held atop sturdy three-to-four-foot stems through summer. The effect is fresh and luminous in a moist border, and just as useful to wildlife.
Aromatic aster is the toughest and most fragrant of the fall asters, and 'Raydon's Favorite' is the classic selection. Aster oblongifolius 'Raydon's Favorite' forms a dense, rounded mound of small leaves that release a clean, balsam-like scent when brushed, and in early to mid fall vanishes under a haze of lavender-blue, gold-centered daisies.
Crossvine is a vigorous, semi-evergreen native climber that ascends by tendrils and adhesive holdfasts, and var. atrosanguinea is the red one: where the typical crossvine flowers orange, this striking selection, introduced by Woodlanders, carries abundant deep red to red-purple trumpets, often over narrower, longer leaves. The flowers even smell faintly of mocha on a warm day.
A bold, dramatic subtropical, Brugmansia (Datura) suaveolens 'Pink' hangs huge, soft pink, trumpet-shaped flowers, sometimes eight inches or more, that pour out an intoxicating fragrance on warm evenings. Herbaceous and dieback in zone 8, treelike in zone 10, the angel's trumpet makes a fast, theatrical show through a hot summer.
Buddleia alternifolia, the fountain or alternate-leaf butterfly bush, stands apart from the usual butterfly-bush crowd. A deciduous shrub native to northwestern China, the fountain butterfly bush is the most cold-hardy of the genus, and is grown above all for a weeping form and an early-season flood of fragrant, lavender-purple bloom.
'Lochinch' is one of the most refined of the butterfly bushes, a cross of Buddleia davidii and the silvery Buddleia fallowiana that takes the best of both: dense, fragrant panicles of soft lavender-blue, each tiny flower lit by a small orange eye, over handsome gray-green, almost silver foliage. Compact and rounded, the shrub blooms all summer into fall on the new growth.
'Miss Ruby' is the butterfly bush that finally cracked the color barrier: a striking, near-sterile hybrid of Buddleia davidii and Buddleia globosa carrying racemes of bright, purplish pink, a magenta few other butterfly bushes can touch. The shrub was bred by Dr. Dennis Werner at the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, North Carolina, the source of our cuttings.
