Woodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and U.S. 119 is one of the most refined of the group. A complex USDA hybrid, a citrumelo crossed back with a sweet orange, the tree runs one quarter trifoliate orange, one quarter grapefruit, and one half sweet orange, a pedigree chosen to keep the toughness of the trifoliate while pushing the fruit toward genuine quality.
US-942 began life as a rootstock, bred by the USDA and released in 2010 after years of Florida field trials, a careful cross of the Sunki mandarin and the curious Flying Dragon form of trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata. As a rootstock the record is stellar: compact, productive trees, strong resistance to Phytophthora and tristeza virus, and better tolerance of citrus greening than most, which is why growers across the citrus belt have come to trust the number.
The sour orange is grown across the warm world as an ornamental and even a street tree, and stands somewhat naturalized in Florida. The fruit is famous for marmalade and useful little else, since the flesh is fiercely sour and bitter, not for eating out of hand. This particular unnamed selection has a Woodlanders story: we propagated the tree from a single specimen found growing on the edge of an abandoned sandy field in a remote corner of Appling County, Georgia, with no house anywhere near. What drew us was the crop, abundant, large, and very showy, loose-skinned and easy to peel.
Among the more intriguing fruits in the Woodlanders citrus collection, the Gou Tou sour orange stands apart, not only for rarity but for a rare combination of hardiness, heavy fruiting, and surprisingly pleasant flavor. Widely cultivated in Southeast Asia, Citrus aurantium 'Gou Tou' carries the form of a traditional bitter orange but with a taste that leans toward grapefruit, which makes this one of the most palatable sour oranges a gardener outside the subtropics can grow.
The Yuzuquat is a tri-generic hybrid, a curiosity even among unusual citrus. One parent is the yuzu, itself a cross of Citrus ichangensis and Citrus reticulata; the other is the 'Nagami' kumquat, Fortunella margarita. From that three-way pedigree comes an attractive evergreen citrus that bears sour, juicy, lemon-like fruits about the size of a chicken egg.
A very old Chinese cultivar, almost certainly named for the capital of Hunan province where the fruit has been grown for centuries, and quite possibly carrying C. ichangensis somewhere in the parentage. That suspected ancestry would account for the cold tolerance that has made Changsha the parent stock for nearly every modern hardy citrus breeding program of consequence: Wayne Hanna's seedless work at UGA Tifton, the Arctic Frost satsuma cross out of Texas, and others still in trial.
Woodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and the Keraji mandarin is a favorite of the group. A medium-sized evergreen tree with the usual fragrant white citrus flowers, Keraji follows them with what Tom McClendon, in Hardy Citrus for the Southeast, calls "small, yellow, flattened tangerines that have a sweet lemonade taste unlike any other citrus fruits." That flavor is the whole reason to grow the tree, and Keraji has proven quite hardy in Augusta, Georgia since 1997.
NuClem is a special clementine among the cold-hardy citrus, a nucellar selection of the familiar clementine mandarin. Our friend and citrus guru Tom McClendon, who shared this one with us, explains it best: "NuClem is a nucellar Clementine, meaning that it comes true from seed. Most Clementines are polyembryonic, meaning that seeds will almost always produce hybrids with other citrus nearby. NuClem also is distinctive in its cold-hardiness, having proven reliably hardy in Montezuma, GA, making it probably on par with Satsuma. Fruit is globular, about two inches in diameter, with a mildly adherent peel more like an orange than a mandarin. Fruit quality is excellent."
Woodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and Citrus taiwanica is one of the tougher evergreens of the group. A vigorous, upright, spreading, thorny tree, the Taiwan orange bears sour tangerine-to-orange fruit that is both ornamental and useful, the base of a very tasty ade. One of the hardier evergreen citrus, the tree sets good crops here in Aiken, South Carolina.
The Meyer lemon is the great container citrus, beloved for thin-skinned, deep yellow-orange fruit that is sweeter and less acidic than a true lemon, and for fragrant, purple-tinged white flowers that come more than once a year. A small evergreen tree, the Meyer is thought to be a natural hybrid of lemon and some other citrus, probably a sweet orange or mandarin, which accounts for the mellow, almost floral flavor that has made the fruit a favorite of cooks.
Woodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and the Morton citrange is a handsome one. Like other sweet orange and trifoliate orange crosses, Morton makes an attractive ornamental evergreen, with fragrant white spring flowers and orange fruit, but the fruit here sets the cultivar apart: large, smooth-skinned, and remarkably like a true orange, with very few seeds.
American yellowwood is one of the loveliest and least common of our native trees, a broad, round-headed deciduous tree grown for three good seasons of interest. In late spring, usually May, long pendulous panicles of white, pea-like flowers hang from the branch tips, sweetly fragrant and wisteria-like, a spectacle in the years the tree chooses to flower heavily. Summer brings clean, bright-then-deep green compound foliage, and autumn a dependable, clear golden yellow that is among the best fall color of any hardwood. The smooth gray bark, beech-like, holds the winter garden.
A native of China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and parts of South Asia, Clerodendrum trichotomum has been cultivated in Western gardens since the mid-1800s, when the shrub was introduced from Japan and quickly adopted across Europe and the American South for uncanny late-season performance. This is the hardiest member of the genus and, for our money, the most theatrical.
Summersweet has long been a shrub gardeners plant by the nose. Native to the moist woods and pond margins of the eastern United States, Clethra alnifolia earned the old country names Sweet Pepperbush and Summersweet for the honey-and-clove perfume that pours off the white summer spikes, a scent that carries clear across a garden on a warm afternoon. Colonists found a further use for the plant: the flowers, crushed in water, raise a soft lather, and were once pressed into service as a field soap.
Clethra alnifolia, the summersweet or sweet pepperbush, is a deciduous native of the eastern United States, at home along pond edges, in damp woods, and at the margins of coastal swamps from Maine to Florida. The species spreads gently by suckers into colonies of upright stems, and earns the name sweet pepperbush from the small, peppercorn-like seed capsules that follow the flowers and hang on through winter. For all that, the summer flowers are the reason to grow them: erect bottlebrush spikes, intensely honey-scented, that open over many weeks in the heat of July and August when little else in the shrub border is in bloom.
The summersweets are among the most fragrant of American shrubs, native to the moist woods, swamp edges, and pond margins of the eastern United States, where the white summer spikes scent whole acres of low ground. Country people knew the plant as Sweet Pepperbush, for the peppercorn-like seed heads, and as Summersweet, for the honey-and-clove perfume; the crushed flowers even raise a soft lather in water and once served as a woodland soap.
Summersweet, Clethra alnifolia, is one of the great fragrant natives of the eastern United States, a shrub of moist woods and pond edges whose white summer spikes carry a honey-and-clove perfume across the whole garden. Colonists called the plant Sweet Pepperbush, for the peppercorn-like seed heads that follow, and Summersweet, for the scent; the flowers even lather softly in water and once served as a field soap.
Summersweet, or sweet pepperbush, is one of the most useful of the native shrubs for moist, shaded ground, and 'Hummingbird' is the compact, free-flowering selection that made the species a garden staple. Like the straight Clethra alnifolia, this is a stoloniferous deciduous shrub that forms colonies in moist, acid soil, valued above all for the upright spikes of intensely fragrant white flowers that perfume the whole garden in the heat of summer, when little else is blooming.
The Japanese clethra is grown for bark as much as bloom. Clethra barbinervis is a tall, tree-like deciduous shrub or small tree from the mountains of Japan and Korea, carrying somewhat fragrant terminal racemes of white flowers in summer, in the same sweet-scented family as the native summersweets. But the real distinction is the bark: smooth and polished, gray to warm brown, and exfoliating in age to a handsome patchwork that makes this one of the finest small trees for the winter garden.
Clethra fargesii is the Chinese cousin of our native summersweets, a graceful deciduous shrub from the mountain woodlands of central and western China, gathered and named for the French missionary-botanist Paul Farges. Kin to the better-known Clethra barbinervis, the Chinese clethra stays a little shorter and carries dark, glossy green leaves, broadest through the middle and sharply toothed, that color bronze-red to maroon before they fall.
