'Tuscan Blue' is the robust, broad-leaved aristocrat of the upright rosemaries, a fast, strongly vertical form grown as much for the deep blue flowers as for the kitchen. Thicker in leaf and richer in bloom than the common rosemary, the cultivar is the same Mediterranean herb, Rosmarinus officinalis, now moved by botanists into the genus Salvia as Salvia rosmarinus, though few cooks will trouble to relearn the name.
Collingwood Ingram' is a low-growing or spreading form of Rosmarinus officinalis (which see). It has bright blue flowers and narrow, dark green needle-like leaves. This evergreen shrub is very aromatic and requires full sun and well-drained, preferable slightly alkaline soil.
Rostrinucula dependens is a graceful oddity, a deciduous shrub from the hill country of central and southern China that looks, at a glance, like a butterfly bush that has learned to weep. The long, arching stems bow under their own weight, and in late summer they hang out slender, drooping catkins of bloom that give the plant the common name Weeping Buddleia, though the true kinship lies with the mints. Still rare in cultivation and only recently brought into Western gardens, the shrub remains a plant for the curious and the collector.
Rubus coronarius, often called the Easter Rose, is one of those plants that gently refuses categorization. Botanically the species sits squarely among the brambles, a blackberry relative, yet in bloom the shrub bears no resemblance to anything prickly or wild. In place of the usual bramble flower comes a flush of large, fully double white blooms that read far more like heirloom roses than raspberries, each one softly luminous and timed, in the mildest springs, to open around Easter, from which the common name follows.
Rubus irenaeus is a raspberry that has forgotten how to be a bramble. Rather than the arching, thorny canes of the fruiting kinds, the plant trails flat along the ground on downy, weakly prickled stems, laying down a dense evergreen carpet of large, rounded, coltsfoot-like leaves, each six inches or more across, dark and glossy above and felted pale brown beneath. Few groundcovers of any kind bring foliage this bold to deep shade.
Rudbeckia fulgida var. fulgida is the true orange coneflower, the wild species that stands behind the famous 'Goldsturm', quieter, finer, and later to bloom than that celebrated garden child. From a low clump of dark, roughly hairy leaves rise branching stems two to three feet tall, each ending in a small golden daisy about two inches across, the deep yellow rays set around a low dome of brown-black. Where many of the black-eyed Susans have blazed and faded by August, the orange coneflower is only getting started, carrying many small flowers from late summer well into October.
Rudbeckia grandiflora is the tall, wild aristocrat of the coneflowers, sending stiff stems three to six feet high above a clump of coarse, sandpapery leaves to carry large golden daisies through the heat of high summer. The ray flowers droop back from a prominent, dark chocolate-brown central dome in the loose, unbuttoned way of the prairie species, giving the flower a windblown grace that the stiff garden hybrids have long since bred out.
Rudbeckia maxima is the giant of the coneflowers, and grows nothing at all like a black-eyed Susan. From a bold basal rosette of huge, smooth, paddle-shaped leaves the color of blue-gray wax rise bare flower stems five to seven feet tall, each topped by a golden daisy whose drooping rays hang like a skirt beneath a strikingly tall, dark central cone. The effect, foliage and flower together, is pure architecture.
Rudbeckia missouriensis is the black-eyed Susan of the Ozark glades, a tough, long-lived native that covers itself in glowing orange-yellow daisies from the first heat of summer straight through to frost. Narrow, hairy, gray-green leaves and slender stems give the plant a finer, softer look than the coarse garden Susans, and the sheer length of bloom sets the species apart, flowering on through the drought and heat that shut down lesser perennials.
Rudbeckia mohrii is a coneflower unlike any other, and the surprise is in the leaves. Where the rest of the clan spreads coarse, broad foliage, Mohr's coneflower sends up narrow, firm, grass-like blades, upright from the base, so that out of bloom the plant could be mistaken for a sedge or an iris. From this fountain of green rise slender, nearly leafless stems, two to four feet tall, each carrying three to ten bright yellow daisies with reddish-brown to dark purple centers from late spring well into fall.
Rudbeckia nitida is a tall, luminous coneflower that trades the coarse hairiness of the common black-eyed Susans for smooth, glossy, dark green leaves and hairless stems, the shining foliage that gives the species a name. From a leafy base rise slender stems three to five feet tall, each carrying a large yellow daisy whose soft rays droop back from a raised, greenish-brown central cone, blooming through the heat of mid to late summer.
Rudbeckia speciosa var. newmanii is the showy coneflower, a compact, free-flowering black-eyed Susan that many gardeners will know better under the name Rudbeckia fulgida var. speciosa. Smaller, tidier, and even more profuse than the ubiquitous border stalwart 'Goldsturm', the plant covers a neat, clump-forming mound in a long procession of deep gold daisies, each ray fanning out around a dark chocolate-brown central cone from midsummer well into fall.
Rudbeckia triloba is the brown-eyed Susan, an airy, many-branched coneflower that throws up hundreds of small golden daisies, each with a neat dark brown to near-black eye, in a long blaze from late summer until hard frost. Where the familiar black-eyed Susans carry a few large flowers, this species scatters clouds of little ones over a bushy, three-lobed-leaved frame two to four feet tall, one of the most generous and long-blooming natives of the fall garden.
The 'Katie' Ruellia is the well-mannered dwarf of the Mexican petunia, a low, spreading mound barely a foot high that blooms without pause from summer until frost. Above narrow, strap-like, dark green leaves open a steady succession of bluish-purple, trumpet-shaped flowers, each an inch and a half across and lasting but a single day, replaced the next morning by a fresh crop. In Charleston, South Carolina, gardeners know the tribe by the charming old name Breakfast Flower, for the way the blooms greet the day and are gone by evening.
Ruellia caroliniensis, the Carolina wild petunia, is a modest, long-blooming native that carries far more ecological weight than the quiet flowers suggest. From early summer into fall, a steady succession of lavender to violet-purple trumpets, each an inch or two across and lasting only a single day, opens along upright stems a foot or two high, replaced faithfully the next morning so that the plant is seldom out of bloom for months on end.
Ruellia coccinea belongs to the acanthus family and comes from the Caribbean, native to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, where the plant grows as a scarlet-flowered subshrub in warm, humid woodland. The Spanish common name, Yerba Maravilla, reads roughly as marvel herb, a fitting nod to the near-constant show. Through the whole of summer R. coccinea produces slender tubular flowers about an inch long, each opening into five spreading scarlet lobes, borne in clusters from the upper leaf axils and unfurling in succession from early summer until the first frost.
Ruscus aculeatus, Butcher's Broom, is a low evergreen shrub of the asparagus family, native to the woodlands of southern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, and reaching north into the milder parts of the British Isles. What look like glossy, spine-tipped leaves are not leaves at all but flattened stems called cladodes, which take over the work of photosynthesis while the true leaves are reduced to tiny scales. The generic name comes from the Latin ruscum, the old word for a butcher's broom, and the epithet aculeatus means prickled, for the sharp point that tips each cladode.
Ruscus aculeatus 'Wheeler's Variety' is a low, self-fruiting selection of Butcher's Broom, and the whole point of the plant is written into that phrase. The wild species is dioecious, needing a male and a female to set fruit, but 'Wheeler's Variety' is a hermaphroditic clone that carries perfect flowers and so ripens a heavy crop of scarlet berries entirely alone, with no partner required. For a gardener who wants the winter show from a single plant, this is the form to grow.
Sabal 'Birmingham' is one of the hardiest fan palms an American gardener can grow, and the palm owes its survival to Woodlanders. Well-established specimens come through USDA Zone 7, deep into country where an ordinary cabbage palm needs coddling and near-perfect siting just to limp along. Broad, costapalmate, deep green fronds rise on a stout, slowly building trunk, giving the unmistakable palm silhouette hundreds of miles north of where the family usually stops.
Sabal etonia, the scrub palmetto, is a small fan palm found nowhere in the world but Florida, where the palm is a signature of the sand pine scrub, most abundantly along the ancient dunes of the Lake Wales Ridge. The specific epithet etonia comes from the Etonia scrub of Putnam County, the country where the species was first collected, so the botanical name carries a Florida place with it.
