The turtlehead is named twice over for things that go quiet. The genus Chelone is the Greek word for tortoise, after a nymph who mocked the marriage of Zeus and Hera and was turned, for her insolence, into a creature that carries her house and holds her tongue; one look at the flower, a hinged, swollen, pink-and-gaping thing that seems about to either speak or bite, and you see why the name stuck. The species honors John Lyon, the Scottish plant hunter who worked the southern Appalachians in the footsteps of Bartram and Michaux. Lyon collected this turtlehead somewhere in the mountains around 1812 without recording quite where, noting only in his catalog that here was a new species, and a beautiful one; his friend Frederick Pursh later pinned Lyon's name to the plant. Lyon did not have long to enjoy the honor, dying in 1814 in the same southern mountains that had made his name. The plant has fared better. Chelone lyonii grows wild along streambanks and seeps in the high southern Appalachians, and 'Hot Lips' is the selection that turned the color up, deeper rose-pink flowers over foliage that emerges with a bronze cast. The flowers arrive in late summer and run into fall, which is the real gift, holding color in the moist and shaded corners just as the rest of the garden tires. Only a bumblebee is strong enough to force the blooms open, so a planting in flower comes with a low percussion of bees muscling in and backing out. Give them wet feet and a little shade and there is very little that does a damp, difficult spot this gracefully, or this late.
In the dead of winter, when the garden has given up on color and scent alike, Chimonanthus praecox quietly does the impossible. On bare, leafless branches, often in January and February, the wintersweet opens small, waxy, cupped stars of translucent pale yellow, each flushed at the heart with maroon, and from them pours a fragrance so rich and far-carrying that a single sprig will perfume a room. The Chinese name, la mei, the wax plum, catches the look of the petals exactly.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
12–15 ft.
Spread
8–10 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, general wellness, mental & emotional well-being
For a week or two in late spring, the Chinese fringetree vanishes under what looks like a fresh fall of snow. Chionanthus retusus is a deciduous small tree of eastern Asia, native across China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, and the whole performance turns on the flowering: dense, lacy panicles of narrow, strap-shaped petals, pure white and softly fragrant, break over the entire canopy until the leaves all but disappear beneath the froth. The genus name records the effect exactly, from the Greek chion, snow, and anthos, flower.
For a week or two in late spring, the Chinese fringetree disappears under snow. Chionanthus retusus var. serrulatus is a deciduous small tree of East Asia, native to China, Korea, and Japan, and the great show is the flowering: dense, lacy, fringed panicles of pure white, each petal narrow and strap-like, smothering the canopy so thickly that the foliage all but vanishes. The genus name says as much, from the Greek chion, snow, and anthos, flower.
The native fringetree is one of the great small trees of the southern spring. Chionanthus virginicus, a deciduous large shrub or small tree, often multi-stemmed, hangs the whole canopy with fleecy, drooping panicles of narrow white petals in spring, soft as torn paper and lightly fragrant, a look that earned the old country names old man's beard and grancy graybeard. On female plants the flowers give way to clusters of raisin-sized, deep blue-purple fruits that birds take quickly.
Chitalpa tashkentensis is a plant with a passport, an intergeneric hybrid that pairs the American desert willow, Chilopsis linearis, with a catalpa, and carries the frilled trumpet flowers of one parent on the willowy, drought-hardy frame of the other. The name itself is a splice, Chilopsis joined to Catalpa, while tashkentensis records the birthplace, the botanical garden at Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, where the cross was raised in the 1960s. From that single Central Asian introduction descend the chitalpas grown across America today.
Choisya is a small genus of aromatic evergreen shrubs from the southwestern United States and Mexico, kin to citrus in the rue family, and Choisya 'Aztec Pearl' is the garden world's favorite of the tribe. The hybrid, a cross between Choisya arizonica and Choisya ternata, was raised by Peter Moore at Longstock Park Nursery in England, and the selection has proved hardier, more heat tolerant, and altogether easier in the garden than either parent.
Cinnamomum burmannii is the tree behind most of the cinnamon in an American kitchen, an evergreen of the laurel family whose fragrant inner bark, dried and ground, fills the great majority of the spice jars labeled simply cinnamon. Native to the highlands of Indonesia and across tropical Southeast Asia, this glossy-leaved tree is a cassia cinnamon, close kin to true Ceylon cinnamon, to the camphor tree, and to bay laurel, sassafras, and avocado. The whole plant is aromatic, from the leathery leaves to the spicy bark.
A rare evergreen tree from southern China, seldom seen in cultivation, Cinnamomum wilsonii belongs to the cinnamon and camphor clan, and the kinship shows in the glossy, leathery, dark green leaves, four to five inches long and marked with three bold veins that run nearly to the tip. Crushed or bruised, the foliage and bark give off the warm, spicy fragrance the genus is loved for. The Chinese name, chuan gui, places the tree in Sichuan and the mountains of the south, where the tree grows large and the aromatic bark has long been valued.
Cistus x corbariensis is a white rockrose, one of the toughest and most charming of the Mediterranean sun shrubs, covered through late spring and early summer in flowers like small single roses. Each bloom is pure white with a gold eye, the petals crinkled like tissue paper, opening from buds tinged red and lasting a single day before the next takes over. Despite the name, a rockrose is no relation to the true roses, belonging instead to the Cistaceae, the rockrose family of the dry Mediterranean hills.
The rockroses bloom as if for a single day, and in a sense they do. Each papery flower of Cistus x purpureus lasts only from morning to evening before dropping, yet through late spring the shrub opens fresh bloom after fresh bloom, so the whole plant seems perpetually covered. The flowers are the draw: two to three inches wide, crushed-silk petals of pinky purple, each stamped at the base with a deep maroon blotch, a marking that earned the old garden name orchidspot rockrose. Rockroses are not roses, and are not related; the resemblance is only in the open, five-petalled face.
Sourced originally from the noted citrus enthusiast Tom McClendon, Citrumelo 'Dallas' is a cold-hardy hybrid between the rugged trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata, and a grapefruit. From that unlikely pairing comes a vigorous small tree that carries the trifoliate's toughness and a good measure of grapefruit character in the fruit.
Citrumelo 'Dunstan' is a hardy heirloom hybrid of the rugged trifoliate orange, Citrus trifoliata, and the sunlit grapefruit, Citrus paradisi, and from that unlikely marriage comes a fruit and tree of real merit. The golden-yellow globes swell to nearly four inches across, fragrant, and, touched with sugar, carry the tart refreshment of a grapefruit picked a little shy of ripe. Here is fruit both rustic and refined, bred for survival yet still hinting at the orchard.
The Ponderosa lemon is grown for spectacle as much as for the kitchen. The fruits are enormous, often two to four pounds each, thick-skinned and gloriously bumpy, hanging like green-gold cannonballs among the glossy leaves. For all the size, the flesh is tart, juicy, and true lemon in flavor, and works in any recipe a regular lemon would, with the novelty of a single fruit that can fill a hand.
The Rangpur is not truly a lime at all, but Indian gardeners have used the fruit as one for more than five hundred years. Citrus x limonia, an old natural hybrid of mandarin and citron, bears small, round, deep orange fruits that look like tangerines and taste fiercely sour, with the aromatic bite that makes a fine lime substitute for cooking, cocktails, and marmalade. In India the fruit goes by surkh nimboo, the red lime, prized for exactly that intense, tart juice.
Among the very first of the citranges, Citrus 'Rusk' dates to 1897, when Walter Swingle crossed a Ruby orange with the tough, cold-hardy trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata, in the great effort to breed citrus that could take a freeze. The result is a vigorous, tall-growing, notably hardy tree, evergreen to semi-evergreen, and dense with the distinctive three-parted trifoliate leaves.
Named for Walter Tennyson Swingle, the pioneering citrus breeder who spent his career crossing tender oranges with the iron-hardy trifoliate orange, the Swingle citrumelo is among the toughest citrus hybrids ever raised. A cross of grapefruit, Citrus paradisi, and trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata, this vigorous, thorny, semi-evergreen shrub or small tree carries fragrant white citrus blossoms in spring, followed by pear-shaped yellow fruits about the size of a large orange.
Woodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and the Troyer citrange is a classic of the kind. A cross of the Washington navel orange and the inedible but iron-hardy trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata, the Troyer was raised in 1909 under the direction of the great citrus breeder Walter Swingle, and later named for A. M. Troyer of Fairhope, Alabama, where the tree first bore fruit, a nice southern footnote for a hardy citrus.
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.
Woodlanders has been a leader in offering a wide range of Citrus and Citrus hybrids which are hardy outdoors beyond the normal Citrus growing areas. This orange is actually an orange x tangelo hybrid. Tangelo is a grapefruit x mandarin hybrid. It was bred in Florida for cold hardiness but is not widely tested. It has however grown and been productive on the South Carolina coast. The fruit is said to be sweet and for marketing puroposes it is classified as an orange.
