Few native perennials burn as bright as Lobelia cardinalis, the cardinal flower, whose late-summer spikes of pure, velvety scarlet stop traffic in any garden. The species ranges across much of North America along stream banks, wet meadows, and ditches, and takes the common name from the vivid red of a cardinal's robes. From a low rosette of broad green leaves rises a stiff, unbranched stem hung with tubular flowers built, as luck would have it, precisely to the reach of a hummingbird's bill.
Where the cardinal flower runs to scarlet, Lobelia siphilitica answers in blue. The great blue lobelia sends up leafy spikes packed with inch-long, two-lipped flowers of clear, saturated blue in late summer and early fall, one of the truest blues in the native flora and a gift to the garden at a tired time of year. The species grows wild across eastern and central North America in moist meadows, low woods, and along streamsides.
Coral honeysuckle in a suit of gold: Lonicera sempervirens 'John Clayton' trades the fire-engine red of the species for clear, warm yellow, borne in the same neat whorled clusters at the branch tips. This is a compact, well-mannered, repeat-blooming selection of one of the finest native vines of the eastern United States, flowering from late spring through summer and often again in fall.
Lonicera sempervirens 'Leo' is the coral honeysuckle at its free-flowering best, a selection of the native red honeysuckle that covers itself in bright red, yellow-throated trumpets over an unusually long season. The tubular flowers pour nectar for ruby-throated hummingbirds, which find the vine as irresistible as gardeners do, and the blue-green leaves, some fused right around the stem, make a cool foil for all that heat.
Lonicera sempervirens 'Sulphurea' is coral honeysuckle gone golden, a yellow-flowered form of the native trumpet honeysuckle that trades the usual scarlet for clear, soft sulphur-yellow. The tubular flowers cluster in tiered whorls at the branch tips from late spring through summer, glowing against fresh green leaves so the whole vine looks sunlit even under a gray sky.
Lyonia lucida, the fetterbush, is one of the quiet evergreen pleasures of the Southeastern wetlands, a shrub of upright, arching stems clothed in glossy, leathery leaves. Look closely and each smooth leaf shows a fine vein running just inside the margin, a neat identifying mark, and the species name lucida, Latin for shining, salutes that polished surface. The common name comes from the dense, tangling thickets the shrub forms in the wild, said to fetter anyone trying to walk through.
Lyonia lucida 'Morris Minor' is Woodlanders' own compact selection of the native fetterbush, a tidier, smaller-leaved form of one of the Southeast's finest evergreen shrubs. The name is a small joke and a tribute at once: the little, rounded leaves recall the Morris Minor motorcar, and the selection honors the landowner, Mr. Morris, on whose property the original plant was found.
Magnolia acuminata, the cucumbertree, is the giant of the native magnolias and the only one hardy far into the North. A deciduous forest tree of the eastern United States, most majestic in the southern Appalachians, the cucumbertree can rise seventy to ninety feet into a broad, rounded canopy, valued as a fast-growing, exceptionally hardy shade tree for parks and large lawns.
Magnolia ashei, the Ashe magnolia, is one of the great show-offs of the plant world packed into a shrub-sized frame. The enormous leaves, often two feet long and nearly a foot wide, give a decidedly tropical air, and the flowers are astonishing: creamy-white goblets up to a foot across, sweetly fragrant, each marked with a bold purple blotch at the base of the inner petals. Best of all, the Ashe magnolia blooms while still young and small, sometimes at barely knee height, a rare gift among magnolias.
Magnolia cordata is the yellow cucumbertree, a smaller, more garden-friendly cousin of the towering cucumbertree magnolia and, botanically, a variety of it, Magnolia acuminata var. subcordata. Where the parent species climbs seventy feet and hides greenish flowers high in the canopy, this yellow-flowered form stays a modest tree of twenty-five to thirty-five feet and carries the trait breeders have chased for generations: tulip-shaped blooms of clear, canary yellow.
Magnolia macrophylla, the bigleaf magnolia, holds a national record: the largest simple leaves and the largest flowers of any tree native to North America. A deciduous magnolia of rich, sheltered woodlands scattered from West Virginia south to Louisiana and Florida, the tree is scarce in the wild and unforgettable in leaf, with blades up to three feet long and a foot wide, deep green above and a soft silvery white beneath that flashes when the wind turns them.
Sweetbay magnolia is one of the loveliest and most useful of the native magnolias, a tree of moist and swampy ground across the eastern United States from Massachusetts to Texas. The northern plants, Magnolia virginiana var. virginiana, are shrubby and deciduous; the southern, var. australis, grow into larger, evergreen trees. All share the sweetbay's gifts: leaves silvery white beneath that flash in the wind, and creamy, intensely fragrant flowers with a clean lemon scent.
Sweetbay magnolia ranges across the moist ground of the eastern United States, from Massachusetts to Texas, and in the South becomes the larger, evergreen tree botanists call Magnolia virginiana var. australis. 'Santa Rosa' is a superior evergreen selection of that southern variety, a Woodlanders introduction gathered in Santa Rosa County, in the Florida panhandle.
'Woodlanders Evangeline' is our own selection of the southern, evergreen sweetbay magnolia, Magnolia virginiana var. australis, chosen for the qualities that make a sweetbay worth growing: glossy evergreen foliage, a shapely habit, and the clean, lemon-sweet fragrance for which the species is loved. Sweetbay is native across the moist ground of the eastern United States, and in the South grows into a graceful evergreen tree rather than the shrubby, deciduous plant of the North.
Magnolia virginiana, the sweetbay magnolia, has long been a tree of distinction in the American landscape, ranging from the cool wetlands of Massachusetts to the Gulf Coast. Across that span the species wears two very different guises. In the northern states the sweetbay is a smaller, often shrubby tree that drops its leaves in winter; in the Deep South the species reaches fullest expression as Magnolia virginiana var. australis, the evergreen southern sweetbay, a large and enduring tree of great grace.
Among the sweetbay magnolias there is a curious dwarf that most references overlook, though at Woodlanders we feel the plant deserves proper recognition. This form, Magnolia virginiana var. pumila, grows wild on the frequently burned pinelands of the southern Coastal Plain, and looks to be an adaptation to that fiery world: the plant stays small, begins flowering while very young and low, and spreads slowly by underground runners into a modest colony.
There is something quietly instructive about the range of Magnolia virginiana. The species runs from the cold, swampy woods of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where a small population clings to the northern edge of the natural territory, all the way down to the Gulf Coast of Texas, a span of climate and geography that would seem to demand two entirely different plants. In the North the sweetbay obliges by turning deciduous, multi-stemmed, and compact, staying modest in deference to the winters. In the South the same species becomes something else entirely, a tall, evergreen tree of real stature. Botanists eventually gave the northern form a name of its own, var. virginiana, and that is what Woodlanders grows here, raised from seed collected at the Massachusetts limit of the range.
Hardiness
Zones 5–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
20–40 ft.
Spread
15–20 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
respiratory support, pain relief, general wellness
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.
