Set aside the family reputation. Acacia angustissima is the polite, thornless cousin in a clan better known for its armament, a soft green presence where you might brace for spines. Botanists have since moved it to its own genus, Acaciella, but in the trade it keeps the old familiar name. It grows wild across the dry grasslands and open woods of the south-central United States down into Mexico and Central America, carrying itself like a small green fountain of fine, ferny, twice-divided foliage that filters the light rather than blocking it.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun
Height
4–5 ft.
Spread
4–5 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
digestive health, pain relief, topical applications, general wellness
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.
Acer barbatum is a medium to large deciduous tree of rounded, oval form, a southern cousin of the northern sugar maple and sometimes filed under Acer saccharum subsp. floridanum or Acer floridanum. The Florida maple is built for heat in a way the northern relative is not, smaller in every part, with leaves that are whitish beneath and a constitution suited to long, humid summers. In the wild these trees favor fertile, moist, well-drained, often calcareous ground, frequently along streams and in rich hammocks from Virginia south to the Florida panhandle and west into Texas.
Acer rubrum 'Candy Ice' is a Woodlanders introduction, found in southwest Virginia by the late Norman Beal. We use Norman's original name, though the same tree has been circulated elsewhere as 'Snowfire'. This is an unusual variegated red maple, the leaves marbled in pink, white, and green, and the foliage burns early, among the first to color when fall arrives.
Aconitum uncinatum, the southern blue monkshood, is an uncommon and long-lived native of the eastern United States, scattered through the Appalachians and Piedmont in rich, moist woods, along streambanks, and in cool seeps. The slender stems ascend and lean, sometimes weakly climbing to several feet, carrying lobed leaves and, in late summer into fall, terminal racemes of medium blue, hooded flowers held on long stalks. The cowl-shaped upper sepal gives the monkshoods their name, and few native wildflowers match this clean, late-season blue.
White baneberry earns the better-known name doll's eyes from the fruit: in late summer each white, pea-sized berry carries a single dark stigma scar, set on a thickened, coral-red stalk, so a whole cluster seems to stare back. A clump-forming native perennial of rich eastern woodlands, Actaea pachypoda opens fluffy white racemes above divided foliage in late spring, then trades flowers for that startling, long-lasting fruit display.
Hardiness
Zones 3–7
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
1–3 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
pain relief, respiratory support, reproductive health
The southern maidenhair has a way of choosing impossible places. Look for this fern on a shaded limestone bluff where water seeps through the rock, or in the spray zone of a spring-fed creek, and you will likely find the fronds growing sideways out of a crevice as if that were the most natural thing in the world. The wiry black stems hold up fan-shaped pinnules so thin they seem almost translucent in morning light, and the whole plant trembles at the slightest breath of air. Few native ferns carry this much delicacy with so little fuss.
In the cool hush of shaded woods, Adiantum pedatum rises on slender, glossy black stems that hold the lacy green fronds in flattened semicircles, each a hand-turned fan or horseshoe of finely cut segments. Standing twelve to thirty inches tall, the northern maidenhair forms serene clumps that spread slowly on creeping rhizomes, never in a hurry. In early spring the fiddleheads emerge a rosy to burgundy hue and uncurl into the distinctive bird's-foot, palmately branched leaves that give the fern such grace.
A rare dwarf form of the Ohio buckeye, Aesculus glabra var. nana was found in just a few places in the hills of northern Alabama and northern Georgia, far south of the species' usual range. Where the typical Ohio buckeye climbs to thirty feet or more, this dwarf settles into a rounded shrub of about six feet, carrying the same handsome palmate leaves divided into finger-like leaflets that flush early and color in fall.
In July, when most of the shade garden has settled into a holding pattern of foliage and waiting, Aesculus parviflora opens for business. The timing is the first surprise. The flowers are the second. Each panicle is a foot or more of tightly packed white tubular blooms with conspicuous pink-red anthers projecting beyond the petals, the whole spike held upright above the foliage like something assembled by a botanical committee that could not decide between elegant and extravagant and chose both. A mature colony in full bloom in midsummer is among the more spectacular events available to the shade gardener, and the hummingbirds and swallowtails arrive reliably.
A wide-spreading, suckering, multi-stemmed deciduous shrub of slow, deliberate growth, Aesculus parviflora var. serotina carries the same upright white bottlebrush flowers as the bottlebrush buckeye, but opens them two to three weeks later, well into the heat of summer. The overall shape is irregular and almost stratified, the branches layering horizontally, and the medium to dark green leaves turn a clear yellow in fall.
The red buckeye is the South's hummingbird herald, a clump-forming, round-topped deciduous shrub or small tree whose lustrous, palmately compound leaves break very early, often before the last frosts, and whose six-inch panicles of tubular scarlet-red flowers open in spring just as the ruby-throated hummingbirds return north. The bright bloom, unusual among the buckeyes, draws hummingbirds and bees in numbers and gives the plant a long place in the affection of native-plant gardeners across the southern United States.
A low, often half-prostrate form of the red buckeye, Aesculus pavia var. humilis keeps to a small, spreading shrub where the typical red buckeye grows into a small tree. The scarlet spring flowers come in smaller panicles, and in every other respect the plant follows the species: lustrous palmate leaves that break early, a love of moist, well-drained woodland soil, and the same magnetism for returning hummingbirds.
A red or scarlet flowered buckeye of the Gulf Coast, Aesculus splendens stands close to the red buckeye, Aesculus pavia, and may be no more than a striking form of that species. Dirr, in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, notes that Rehder listed this buckeye as a distinct species and that several horticulturists feel strongly about the authenticity, the chief differences being scarlet flowers and leaves felted on the undersides. Native to Louisiana and perhaps other Gulf Coast states, the scarlet buckeye is grown much as the red buckeye is.
The century plant is the great architectural agave, a broad rosette of thick, gray green, spine-tipped leaves that can spread six to eight feet across, each leaf edged with hooked teeth and ending in a hard dark spine. The form is bold and symmetrical, a piece of living sculpture for a hot, dry corner, and the silver cast of the foliage carries the planting through every season.
A graceful native onion, Allium cernuum, the nodding onion, lifts loose clusters of pink to lavender, bell-shaped flowers that bend over in a soft arc at the top of slender stems, swaying through mid and late summer above tufts of grassy, blue-green foliage. The nodding habit gives the plant a particular charm, and the flowers draw native bees, butterflies, and other pollinators in good numbers.
Hardiness
Zones 4–8
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
12–18 in.
Spread
6–8 in.
Bloom
Pink
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, digestive health, immune support
Seaside alder is a medium to large deciduous shrub, sometimes a small tree, with glossy, oval, toothed leaves and a habit of doing things backward. Where every other native alder flowers in spring, Alnus maritima opens elongated catkins in the fall, then carries small, woody, pinecone-like fruits through winter for quiet ornament.
Coastal serviceberry is the compact, low-growing member of a beloved native clan, a small deciduous shrub of the Atlantic coastal plain that spreads gently into colonies and opens clouds of white, five-petaled flowers in early spring, among the first shrubs to bloom as the woods wake.
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
Smooth false indigo is a rare deciduous shrub of sandy southern streambanks, carrying pinnate, compound leaves whose leaflets are notably large and rounded, a softer, more luxuriant texture than the ferny foliage of the common false indigos. In early summer the branch tips raise slender spikes of tiny blue to purple flowers, each lit with the bright orange anthers typical of the genus.
