Most of the summersweets drop their leaves and sleep through winter; Clethra pringlei keeps them. This Mexican member of the clan is a broad-leaved evergreen, a large, slow-growing shrub or small tree from the mountain woodlands of northeastern Mexico, and one of the more surprising plants in the genus for a gardener who knows only the deciduous American kinds.
Clethra alnifolia and the southern Clethra tomentosa are stoloniferous deciduous shrubs commonly called Summersweet or Sweet Pepperbush. They form colonies in moist acid soil and make good garden subjects. They are valued for their terminal spikes of fragrant white flowers in summer. Plant in sun or semi-shade and provide adequate moisture. This clone of the southern species has light colored backs of leaves and amazing flower racemes up to 16 inches long! This Woodlanders introduction is a plant we selected from the wild in the Florida Panhandle. It was the highest rated Clethra clone tested in trials at Longwood Gardens. Clethra tomentosa is native to the southern U.S.
Clethra alnifolia and the southern Clethra tomentosa are stoloniferous deciduous shrubs commonly called Summersweet or Sweet Pepperbush. They form colonies in moist acid soil and make good garden subjects. They are valued for their terminal spikes of fragrant white flowers in summer. Plant in sun or semi-shade and provide adequate moisture. This selection has leaves that are speckled and banded with cream to white variegation. Found by Mike Creel in Lexington County, SC. Plant best in semi-shade.
The summersweets are among the most fragrant of American shrubs, and the southern woolly summersweet, Clethra tomentosa, carries the whole tribe's gifts: colonies of upright stems in moist, acid ground, and terminal spikes of white flowers that pour a honey-and-clove perfume across the July garden. Country people knew the plant as Sweet Pepperbush, for the peppercorn seed heads, and the crushed flowers even raise a soft lather once used as a woodland soap.
Cleyera japonica was for generations placed in the tea family, the Theaceae, alongside camellia and tea themselves, and the resemblance still reads in the glossy, leathery, deep green leaves. Later molecular study moved the genus out of that family and into the Pentaphylacaceae, so the old tea-family listing has since been dropped, though the kinship of appearance remains. In the plant's native Japan the species carries a sacred weight few garden shrubs can claim: this is the sakaki, written with a character that fuses the signs for tree and for god, and the branches are cut for tamagushi, the leafy wands offered at Shinto shrines for blessing and purification. Small, sweetly scented cream flowers open in early summer, followed by berries that ripen from red to black.
Cliftonia monophylla 'Berry Pink' is a rare, pink-flowered selection of the Black Titi, a native evergreen shrub or small tree of the southeastern coastal plain that normally blooms in white. The species haunts the acid bogs, pond margins, and titi swamps from the Carolinas to the Gulf, where the early flowers make the buckwheat tree one of the first and most important nectar sources of the southern year, the source of the prized titi honey.
Clinopodium coccineum is a small, aromatic, semi-evergreen subshrub of the mint family, native to the deep, well-drained sands of the southeastern coastal plain from Mississippi and Georgia down into Florida. The loose, open frame and small, spicy-scented leaves would earn a quiet place on their own, but the flowers are the event: scarlet tubes an inch or two long, held out like little trumpets. Bloom comes heaviest in spring and again in fall, with scattered flowers through the summer between, and in the mildest gardens of zones 8 and 9 the plant will open something in almost any month the weather stays soft.
‘Amber Blush’ is a soft-toned selection of the native scarlet calamint, Clinopodium coccineum, an aromatic, semi-evergreen subshrub of the mint family from the deep sands of the southeastern coastal plain. Where the wild species flowers in hot scarlet, this clone brings a gentler and more complicated color to the same tough, hummingbird-visited plant: bright yellow washed with orange, deepening toward amber.
Clinopodium coccineum ‘Ohoopee Yellow’ wears a contradictory name, since this is a clear, bright yellow-flowered form of a mint shrub that usually blooms in scarlet. Yellow forms turn up rarely in wild populations, and the floras note them in passing as a curiosity. This one was caught and kept.
Clinopodium georgianum is a low, aromatic shrublet of the mint family, grown for strongly scented foliage and clouds of soft pinkish-lavender flowers from late summer into fall, peaking around September when much of the garden is winding down. Where the scarlet calamint is a hummingbird firework, Georgia savory is the quiet one: smaller flowers, softer color, and a season that arrives when the bees have run short of options. Crushed, the leaves smell frankly minty, with a sweet edge that one nurseryman has compared to expensive peppermint candy.
'Desi Arnez' (Clinopodium georgianum hybrid) turned up as a chance seedling in the garden of Robert Mackintosh, a cross of uncertain parentage that Woodlanders judged worth keeping and worth introducing. The likeliest account is a quiet romance between Georgia savory (Clinopodium georgianum) and a neighboring false rosemary (Conradina), two southeastern natives that seldom bother to cross the line between their genera. Botanists who keep their Latin tidy now file the result under the bigeneric name ×Clinadina, which is roughly how the field admits it never saw the match coming.
Large-flowered scarlet calamint is a small, wiry, semi-evergreen subshrub of the Florida sandhills, close kin to the better-known red basil, Clinopodium coccineum, and distinguished chiefly by the size of the flowers. Slender scarlet tubes, generously long, open along the stems from spring through summer and are built precisely for hummingbirds, which find them quickly and come back. The leaves are small, neat and aromatic, throwing a clean mint scent when brushed, and the whole plant stays open and airy rather than dense, better placed at the front of a bed than in the middle of it.
Clytostoma callistegioides is one of those vines that feels as though the plant wandered out of an old botanical expedition: vigorous, evergreen, and brimming with the sort of charm collectors once crossed oceans to find. A close relative of our native crossvine (Bignonia capreolata), this South American cousin shares the same athletic climbing spirit but dresses in glossier, more refined foliage and carries larger flowers.
Among the most bewitching sights in the summer garden, Colocasia esculenta 'Black Magic' rises like a gothic dream from the soil, the velvety, purple-black leaves casting deep shade and deeper admiration. Sometimes called the Jet Black Wonder, this dramatic taro cultivar has become a garden sensation across the South, beloved for bold color and architectural form.
This one comes with a paper trail. 'Illustris' was first described in 1873 by William Bull, the Chelsea nurseryman, who listed the plant as Alocasia illustris in his catalogue of new and rare plants and sold them out of his glasshouses at 536 King's Road. Nobody knows quite where they came from. Colocasia esculenta is a restless, variable species, and Bull had rivers of tropical material moving through the place, so the likeliest story is that he caught a dark-leaved sport among the green, liked what he saw, and kept dividing the stock. Every 'Illustris' in cultivation descends from that one Victorian decision. A 150-year-old clone, still in production.
Colquhounia coccinea is a showy, soft-wooded shrub of the mint family, clothed in medium-sized leaves that are downy and pleasantly rough to the touch. Through late summer and fall come dense terminal spikes of orange-scarlet, yellow-throated flowers, a hot late-season color that hummingbirds and pollinating insects work eagerly. Plant in a sunny, well-drained site with good soil, where the arching stems can be trained against a warm wall.
Endemic to a few localities in two central Florida counties, this aromatic mint shrub is a FEDERALLY LISTED ENDANGERED SPECIES AND CANNOT BE SOLD IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE. Similar to Conradina canescens it is a low wiry shrub with dense foliage consisting of grayish small needle-like leaves. The small tubular flowers are pale lavender to white. Native on deep sterile sandy soil in sunny sites, it should be planted in locations that are sunny and well-drained.
The conradinas are dense, aromatic, low shrubs of the mint family, dressed in small, usually needle-like green or gray leaves and hung with little pale purple flowers. Six or seven species grow wild in the southern United States, most of them in Florida on sand or very sandy soil, and the genus carries an unusual weight of rarity: four species are federally listed, C. brevifolia, C. etonia and C. glabra as endangered and C. verticillata as threatened, with two more carrying state protection in Florida. Conradina canescens is the exception and the common one, a somewhat variable plant of the Gulf Coast dunes of northwest Florida and adjacent Alabama and Mississippi.
Conradina canescens ‘Gray Mound’ is a silver-leaved selection of the false rosemary that grows wild on the deep, pine-fringed sands of the northern Gulf Coast, in Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida panhandle, where the species holds the back of the primary dunes and runs inland into sand pine scrub. A member of the mint family, this aromatic shrub carries soft, needle-like foliage in a ghostly silver-gray, and from March into November, heaviest in spring, offers pale lavender to bluish two-lipped flowers spotted with dark purple on the lower lip, which native bees work steadily.
This is a federally listed endangered species. NOT FOR SALE IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE. It is a new species discovered by Bob McCartney in Putnam County, Florida in 1990 and introduced by Woodlanders. Medium mint family shrub larger than most other Conradina species. Has aromatic oval leaves unlike other Conradinas which have needle-like leaves. Large pale lavender flowers similar to Conradina grandiflora. Native to very limited area on deep sandy soil. If given sunny site with good drainage it grows well in the garden.
