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Seen from across a summer garden, Ipomoea fistulosa could pass for one of the great perennial hibiscus, a big soft-wooded bush hung with pink funnels. Look closer and the flowers give the game away: these are true morning glories, five-petaled trumpets in shell to lavender-pink with a deeper throat, carried in loose clusters above broad, bright green leaves. Better known to botanists as Ipomoea carnea subspecies fistulosa, the bush morning glory breaks the family mold by climbing nothing at all, standing instead as an upright shrub six to ten feet tall.

Hardiness

Zones 8–11

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

6–9 ft.

Spread

4–5 ft.

Bloom

Pink

Plant type

Shrub

Iris brevicaulis is the low, quiet member of a famous clan. One of the five wild species known collectively as the Louisiana irises, the plant carries broad blue to violet flowers on curiously kinked, zigzagging stems, so short that the blooms rarely clear the fan of sword-shaped leaves. Botanists call that back-and-forth habit fractiflex, and the trait gives the plant one of the common names, zigzag iris; the Latin brevicaulis, short-stemmed, records the same feature, while a third name, Lamance iris, honors the American horticulturist Lora La Mance.

Hardiness

Zones 4–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

10–15 in.

Spread

10–12 in.

Bloom

Blue

Plant type

Perennial

Iris cristata is the iris scaled down for the woodland floor, a dwarf native barely six inches high that spreads into low, overlapping fans of bright green blades. In mid to late spring the mats light up with small flowers, an inch and a half to two inches across, in soft lavender-blue to violet, each fall stamped with a white patch and a raised orange or yellow ridge. That ridge is the crest that gives the plant both the Latin name cristata, crested, and the common name crested iris, and the feature sets the species apart from the bearded and beardless irises alike.

Hardiness

Zones 4–8

Light

Part Shade / Full Shade

Height

6–8 in.

Spread

10–12 in.

Bloom

Blue

Plant type

Perennial

Among the wild irises of North America, Iris fulva is the one that broke the color rules. Where the family runs to blues, purples, and yellows, the copper iris opens in warm coppery red to burnt orange, a shade no other native iris offers, carried on slender stems in late spring and early summer with a soft, slightly drooping poise. The Latin fulva, meaning tawny or reddish-brown, records that unusual color, and the common names, copper iris and red iris, say the same thing more plainly.

Hardiness

Zones 4–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

2–3 ft.

Spread

1–2 ft.

Bloom

Red

Plant type

Perennial

A small crested iris with the carriage of an orchid and a quietly extraordinary biography. Iris japonica was named by Carl Peter Thunberg in 1794. Thunberg was a protege of Linnaeus and one of the only Western botanists allowed into Japan during the country's closed period, from 1775 to 1778, so much of what he brought back is, in a real sense, the first documented record of Japanese flora in Western science. The species had already reached Europe two years earlier, carried out of China by Thomas Evans of the East India Company in 1792. By the 1820s Pierre-Joseph Redoute, the same artist whose rose paintings turn up on every aunt's tea tray, was painting the plant under the older name Iris fimbriata in his Choix des plus belles Fleurs. A treasure of cultivated gardens for more than two centuries.

Hardiness

Zones 7–10

Light

Part Shade / Full Shade

Height

12–18 in.

Spread

18–24 in.

Bloom

Blue

Plant type

Perennial

There is a small lie in the name. Sanguinea means blood, and yet the iris in front of you is blue, or blue running toward violet, with only a wine-dark deepening in the falls to argue the case. The botanists felt the strain too: Carl Thunberg first tried to file the plant as Iris orientalis in 1794, found that name already taken, and the species waited until 1813 for the one carried since. The Japanese never bothered with Latin. To them the flower is ayame, one of the three irises of early summer, threaded through a thousand years of poetry and arriving in that uncertain seam where the old poets could never quite agree whether spring had ended or summer begun.

Hardiness

Zones 5–8

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

12–24 in.

Spread

12–15 in.

Bloom

Purple

Plant type

Perennial

The horticulturist Scott Ogden, in Garden Bulbs for the South, sets the scene: the Japanese roof iris, Iris tectorum, is famous in the native country as a flower for planting on sod roofs, just as houseleeks are used on the cottage roofs of France. In gardens the silky green fans of leaves form large patches, a fine subject for the foreground of a shady border, and in April the ruffled, orchid-like blooms appear among the handsome leaves. In the common form these are a rich mottled blue with white crests; even lovelier, Ogden adds, are the white, yellow-crested blooms of the form offered here.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

12–15 in.

Spread

12–15 in.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Perennial

Traditional use

respiratory support, detoxification & cleansing

The horticulturist Scott Ogden, in Garden Bulbs for the South, sets the scene: the Japanese roof iris, Iris tectorum, is famous in the native country as a flower for planting on sod roofs, just as houseleeks are used on the cottage roofs of France. In gardens the silky green fans of leaves form large patches, a fine subject for the foreground of a shady border, and in April the ruffled, orchid-like blooms appear among the handsome leaves. This is the common form, in which the flowers open a rich mottled blue, veined and freckled toward the center, with white crests.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

12–15 in.

Spread

12–15 in.

Bloom

Blue

Plant type

Perennial

Traditional use

respiratory support, detoxification & cleansing

Iris verna is one of those plants that feels like a secret, small, fragrant, and impossibly charming once noticed. Native to the pinewoods and sandy slopes of the eastern United States, this understated iris has been a spring companion for centuries, brightening forest floors long before gardeners thought to give the plant a place at home.

Hardiness

Zones 6–9

Light

Part Shade / Full Shade

Height

6–8 in.

Spread

6–8 in.

Bloom

Blue

Plant type

Perennial

Iris virginica takes the genus name that Linnaeus borrowed from Iris, the Greek goddess who carried messages along the rainbow, a fitting patron for a family that scatters every color through the flower. The species epithet virginica records where botanists first met the plant, in colonial Virginia, though Southern blue flag ranges far beyond, threading wet ground from the Chesapeake down through Florida and west to Texas, and north into the Midwest. In the wild the iris is an obligate wetland plant, at home in marshes, wet meadows, swamps, and the shallow margins of ponds where the roots can sit in standing water for weeks at a time.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

2–3 ft.

Spread

2–3 ft.

Bloom

Purple

Plant type

Perennial

Traditional use

topical applications, detoxification & cleansing, pain relief

Itea, the sweetspires, are graceful shrubs of the family Iteaceae, their name taken from the Greek word for willow, after leaves that recall a willow's. Itea chinensis is the Chinese sweetspire, an uncommon evergreen member of the group, a medium to tall shrub of neat, compact form with oval, glossy leaves that hold through the year in the warm South. In spring the plant hangs slender four-inch spikes of small white flowers, softly fragrant and busy with bees.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

10–12 ft.

Spread

6–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Itea, the sweetspires, are graceful shrubs of the family Iteaceae, named from the Greek word for willow after their willow-like leaves. Itea oldhamii is a little-known evergreen sweetspire from Taiwan, a compact shrub with an unusual party trick: the juvenile leaves can be holly-like, edged with small teeth, while the mature leaves settle to a smooth, entire margin. In late spring the plant carries racemes of small white flowers over glossy evergreen foliage.

Hardiness

Zones 8–10

Light

Part Shade / Full Shade

Height

6–8 ft.

Spread

4–6 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of the wetlands, streambanks, and floodplains of the eastern United States, from New Jersey to Florida and west to Texas. Sometimes called Virginia willow for the shape of the leaves, though the plant is no willow at all, the species is prized for arching, fragrant white flower spikes in early summer and for a fall display of orange, red, and burgundy that rivals far showier shrubs. 'Henry's Garnet' is the selection that made the species a garden staple, free-flowering, with six-inch white racemes and a deep maroon-purple fall color that gives the plant its name.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

3–4 ft.

Spread

4–6 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of eastern wetlands and streambanks, prized for arching, fragrant white flower spikes in early summer and a brilliant fall display of red, orange, and burgundy. 'Little Henry' is the dwarf of the clan, a low, mounded selection that reaches only about three feet, packing the fragrant flowers and fiery fall color of the full-sized sweetspires into a tidy, compact plant for smaller spaces.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

2–3 ft.

Spread

2–4 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of eastern wetlands and streambanks, grown for fragrant white flower spikes in early summer and a fall display of red, orange, and burgundy. 'Longspire' is the selection chosen for its flowers: a form that carries notably long, white racemes, arching sprays of small fragrant blooms that outdo the wild plant for length and presence in early summer.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

4–6 ft.

Spread

4–6 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of eastern wetlands and streambanks, grown for arching, fragrant white flower spikes in early summer and brilliant fall color. 'Sarah Eve' is the exception in the family, the first pink sweetspire: the small flowers are essentially white, but they are carried on rosy-pink pedicels that tint the whole arching raceme a soft, distinctive pale pink, a color no other Itea offers.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

4–6 ft.

Spread

4–6 ft.

Bloom

Pink

Plant type

Shrub

Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of eastern wetlands, familiar in gardens for fragrant white flower spikes and fiery fall color. 'Shirley's Compact,' sometimes called Shirley's Midget, takes the species to an extreme: a true miniature, a dense little bun of a plant with tiny, twisted, inch-long leaves, growing so slowly that a ten-year-old clump may stand only a foot or a foot and a half tall while spreading two or three feet wide.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Part Shade / Full Shade

Height

12–18 in.

Spread

2–3 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Itea, the sweetspires, are graceful shrubs of the family Iteaceae, their name taken from the Greek word for willow. Itea yunnanensis is the Yunnan sweetspire, an evergreen species from southwestern China, close to the Chinese sweetspire but lower and more spreading, with more leathery, darker green leaves that are somewhat holly-like and toothed on juvenile plants and smooth-edged at maturity. In spring the plant carries slender four-inch racemes of small white flowers.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Part Shade / Full Shade

Height

4–6 ft.

Spread

5–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Jasminum beesianum, the red jasmine or Bee's jasmine, breaks the mold of a genus known for white and yellow flowers. This vigorous, semi-evergreen twining climber from the mountains of Yunnan and Sichuan carries small, star-shaped blooms in a deep rose to velvet-red, an unusual color among the jasmines, softly and sweetly fragrant, opening in late spring over slender stems and small, pointed green leaves.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

8–12 ft.

Spread

4–6 ft.

Bloom

Red

Plant type

Vine