Hamamelis virginiana does everything backwards, and that is the entire appeal. When the rest of the woods has shut down for the year, when the leaves are gone and nothing else is in flower, witch hazel chooses that exact moment to bloom: spidery yellow flowers, all thin crimped strap-like petals, scattered along the bare branches through late fall and into the cold. They carry a faint sweet scent on a mild day and they wait, patiently, for whatever gnat or late fly is still working, because almost nothing else is. This is the shrub that flowers when flowering makes no sense, and is all the more loved for the defiance.
Firebush earns the name honestly. From late spring until the first frost, the arching branch tips carry tight clusters of slender tubular flowers in hot orange-red, each one a narrow torch held out for the hummingbirds and butterflies that work the plant from morning to dusk. The foliage plays along: new leaves and stems flush bronze to burgundy, the veins stained red, so that even between flushes of bloom the whole shrub reads warm. Few plants pull in as much winged traffic through the heat of a southern summer.
The name does the plant no favors. "Swamp sunflower" conjures boggy ground and standing water, which is where you find the plant in the wild, yes, but not where you need to plant this sunflower in the garden. Helianthus angustifolius tolerates wet soils in nature because wet soils are where the plant manages to grow without being outcompeted. Given good sun and average garden moisture, the sunflower performs considerably better and needs no drainage problem to justify a place. The name is a provenance note, not a planting instruction.
Helianthus verticillatus is a sunflower you grow as much for the story as the flower, though the flower holds up on merit. The plainest field mark is the leaves: narrow, lance-shaped, and arranged in distinct whorls of three or four around the stem rather than in the usual opposite or alternate pairs, a tidy structural signature that names the plant and sets the species apart from every common sunflower. Tall and strong-stemmed, the plant rises six to ten feet and lifts open clusters of clear yellow, dark-centered flowers in late summer and early fall.
Pineland hibiscus is the wilder, pricklier cousin among the native mallows, and all the more charming for a slightly untamed look. Through the summer the plant opens broad flowers several inches across in soft creamy yellow, each centered on a deep maroon eye, the classic hibiscus form scaled down and set on a low, spreading, bristly frame. The deeply lobed leaves are rough to the touch and the stems carry fine prickles, so the whole plant reads as a hardy native of open, sunny ground rather than a pampered border hybrid.
Hibiscus coccineus, the scarlet rose mallow or Texas star hibiscus, is a tall, dramatic perennial native to the wetlands and swamps of the southern United States. Rising on strong, upright stems to six or ten feet, the plant lifts great scarlet stars above the summer garden, an American native that looks every bit as exotic as any tropical hibiscus and proves far tougher.
Hibiscus coccineus 'Lone Star' is the pure white form of the scarlet rose mallow, and the change of color changes everything. Where the wild species blazes red, 'Lone Star' opens great five-pointed stars of clean, luminous white, five to seven inches across, glowing against deep green, finely cut foliage and all the more striking in the soft light of evening. The same tall, architectural native frame carries a cooler, more serene presence.
Cuban rose mallow is one of the tall, slender members of the perennial hibiscus tribe, a plant that reads as airy and upright rather than bushy. Through the summer the stems carry fairly large flowers in a soft purplish pink, the classic mallow saucer set against distinctly gray-green foliage, and the stems themselves are lightly prickly to the touch. Rising to seven or ten feet on narrow clumps, the plant lifts the bloom well up where the color can be seen from a distance.
Hibiscus dasycalyx is one of the rarest wildflowers in the country, described only in 1968, and even then from a mere handful of sites in the bottomlands of east Texas, in Houston, Trinity, and Cherokee counties, along the Neches, Angelina, and Trinity rivers. The total wild population has been estimated in the low thousands. Whole seasons of botanical fieldwork across the Southeast have turned up fewer plants than a single good nursery bed.
Hibiscus grandiflorus, the swamp rose mallow, is a magnificent native perennial of the southeastern United States, grown for enormous soft-pink blooms and broad, velvety, gray-green leaves. Rising to eight or ten feet on stout stems, the plant brings a lush, almost tropical presence to the summer garden, at home in a wetland but just as striking in an ordinary bed or beside a pond.
Hibiscus moscheutos, the rose mallow, is the hardiest of the perennial hibiscus and the tough, cold-proof parent behind most of the dinner-plate hibiscus sold today. The wild plant is a stout, clump-forming perennial of eastern marshes, rising to six or eight feet each summer and opening broad flowers to six inches and more, clean white or soft pink with a dramatic crimson eye at the center. For sheer size of bloom on a plant that shrugs off hard winters, little else compares.
Hibiscus palustris is the northern, cold-hardy face of the American rose-mallows, a marsh dweller whose species name comes straight from the Latin palus, a swamp or marsh. Botanists today often fold the plant into Hibiscus moscheutos as a subspecies, but the old name still travels with the pink-flowered marsh plants of the Northeast, and gardeners know exactly which plant the name marks. Where many tropical hibiscus sulk at the first frost, this perennial dies cleanly to the ground each winter and returns from a woody crown, unfazed by zone 5 cold.
'Annabelle' is a wild American shrub with a hometown. Around 1910 two sisters, Harriet and Amy Kirkpatrick, spotted an unusually full-flowered smooth hydrangea in the woods of Union County, Illinois, dug the plant, and grew it in their garden in the town of Anna. For half a century the shrub passed hand to hand around southern Illinois as a nameless local treasure, until the University of Illinois plantsman Dr. Joseph C. McDaniel traced the trail back to Anna in the 1960s, selected the plant, and released it for sale in 1962. The name 'Annabelle' honors both the town and the Kirkpatrick belles who found the shrub: Anna plus belle.
The oakleaf hydrangea is the great four-season native shrub of the American Southeast, and 'Alice' is one of the grandest selections of the species. Hydrangea quercifolia grows wild in the rich woods and ravines of a small range centered on Alabama and Mississippi, where the naturalist William Bartram found the shrub in the 1770s and called it singular and beautiful. Alabama later made the oakleaf hydrangea the official state wildflower, a rare honor for a plant that earns attention in every season.
'Alison' is a sister selection to the famous 'Alice,' both drawn from the same native species by the same discerning eye. Hydrangea quercifolia, the oakleaf hydrangea, grows wild in the rich woods of a small Southeastern range centered on Alabama, where the naturalist William Bartram admired the shrub in the 1770s and where the oakleaf now serves as Alabama's official state wildflower. Of all the native shrubs of the region, few offer so much across so many seasons.
The oakleaf hydrangea is the great four-season native shrub of the American Southeast, a large deciduous plant with oak-like leaves, white summer panicles, and peeling cinnamon bark. Hydrangea quercifolia grows wild in the rich woods of a small range centered on Alabama, where the naturalist William Bartram admired the shrub in the 1770s, and where the oakleaf is now the official state wildflower. 'Harmony' is one of the boldest selections the species has produced.
The oakleaf hydrangea is the great four-season native shrub of the American Southeast, a large deciduous plant with oak-like leaves, white summer panicles, and peeling cinnamon bark. Hydrangea quercifolia grows wild in the rich woods of a small range centered on Alabama, where the naturalist William Bartram admired the shrub in the 1770s, and where the oakleaf now serves as the state wildflower. 'Snowflake' is one of our favorites, and one of the most distinctive oakleafs ever selected.
Few native bulbs command a wet margin the way Hymenocallis liriosme does. From a basal fountain of arching, strap-shaped, glossy green leaves rise leafless scapes, each crowned with several large white flowers whose narrow segments splay outward like pale spider legs around a central membranous cup. The fragrance arrives at dusk, sweet and carrying, a signal to the night-flying moths that pollinate the blooms in late spring and early summer.
Hypericum densiflorum earns the name densiflorum, densely flowered, in high summer, when the twiggy shrub disappears under rounded clusters of small golden flowers, each one a starburst of fine stamens above five clean yellow petals. Bees work the blooms from July into September, and as the show fades the narrow dark green leaves turn a warm yellow, giving way in winter to reddish, lightly peeling bark on the older stems.
Hypericum edisonianum is a Florida endemic with an upright, colony-forming habit, sending up reddish-brown stems clothed in small, leathery, gray-green leaves and topped in the warm months with four-petaled yellow flowers, each brushed with a dense tuft of stamens. As the stems age the bark peels away in thin strips, a subtle textural detail on a shrub that spreads by clonal growth into a low thicket.
