Darrow's blueberry is the silver-leaved evergreen of the group, a low, fine-textured native of the pine flatwoods and sandy scrub from southern Georgia through Florida to eastern Louisiana. The species honors George M. Darrow, the United States Department of Agriculture scientist whose breeding work built much of the modern blueberry, and the wild plant has passed its own heat tolerance into many of today's Southern highbush cultivars. 'John Blue' is a North Carolina State University selection chosen for looks as much as fruit, and the leaves are the reason.
Darrow's blueberry is the fine-leaved evergreen of the Southern blueberries, a low, glaucous native of the sandy pinelands from Georgia to Florida, named for George M. Darrow, the United States Department of Agriculture scientist whose work built much of the modern blueberry. Most plants carry the usual blue-green foliage, but 'Rosa's Blush' was chosen for something showier: new growth flushed with generous pink tints that light up the shrub, a character strongest in plants from Highlands County, Florida, and noted among several clones in the North Carolina State University breeding program.
Darrow's blueberry is the small-leaved evergreen of the Southern blueberries, a low native of the sandy pinelands of the Deep South, named for George M. Darrow of the United States Department of Agriculture, whose breeding work shaped the modern blueberry. Most plants of the species carry blue-green foliage, but 'Sebring' is a clone Woodlanders found in Highlands County, Florida and selected for the very small, bright green leaves that give the shrub a fine, tidy texture all its own.
Elliott's blueberry is one of the finest of the wild Southern blueberries, a tall, multi-stemmed deciduous native reaching up to ten feet, with slender twigs and small, glossy green leaves. The species honors Stephen Elliott, the early nineteenth-century South Carolina botanist whose Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia remains a landmark of Southern natural history. The old country name mayberry nods to the fruit, which ripens early, sometimes as soon as May in the warm South.
Shiny blueberry is the little evergreen groundcover blueberry of the Southern Coastal Plain, a low, dense native rarely more than knee-high, spreading gently by rhizome into a fine, glossy-leaved mat. The species name myrsinites likens the small, lustrous leaves to those of myrtle, and the common name shiny blueberry says the same: the whole plant catches light on foliage barely an inch long.
Vaccinium sempervirens is one of the rarest plants in this catalog, an evergreen blueberry known in the wild from a single sandy corner of Lexington County, in the Sandhills of South Carolina. A true local endemic, the plant grows along Atlantic white cedar bogs and seepage slopes where the water table sits high and the sand stays acid, and to grow one is to hold a small piece of a landscape almost nobody has seen.
Deerberry is the odd one out among the wild Southern blueberries, a loose, variable native shrub of dry, sandy uplands, pinewoods, and old-field edges across the eastern and central United States. The flowers give the plant its botanical name: where most blueberries hide their stamens inside closed urns, deerberry opens wide, greenish-white bells with the yellow stamens thrust well beyond the petals, so the species is stamineum, of the stamens. The common name is plainer still, since deer are as fond of the ripe fruit as any creature in the woods.
Small black blueberry is a low, delicate native of the sandy soils and pine barrens of the Southeastern coastal plain, a slender member of the heath family long gathered from the wild for its fruit. The species name tenellum means dainty or tender, a fair description of the fine stems and small leaves, and the common name points to the little dark berries that ripen almost black in late summer.
'Homestead Purple' is one of the great garden discoveries of the modern South, a trailing perennial verbena found not in a breeding plot but by the side of a Georgia road. In the early 1990s the University of Georgia horticulturists Michael Dirr and Allan Armitage drove past a sheet of royal-purple bloom at an old homestead, turned around, and gathered cuttings from a plant the owner said had simply grown there for years. That roadside find became one of the most popular perennials in American gardens, and the botanists gave the plant the name of the place it was found.
Blue vervain rises in summer as a candelabra of slender, pencil-thin spikes, each one lit from the base upward with tiny, five-lobed flowers in a saturated purplish blue that few native perennials can match. Verbena hastata is a clump-forming perennial of eastern North America, reaching two to four feet in good ground and occasionally stretching to six, on stiff, square, hairy stems that branch toward the top. The lance-shaped leaves are sharply toothed and rough to the touch, a coarse green foil for the refined flower spikes above. Bloom comes slowly and deliberately from July into September, only a few florets open on each spike at any moment, so the plant seems to smolder for weeks rather than flare all at once.
Sometimes put in the genus Glandularia, this low growing South American perennial Verbena has dissected leaves and clusters of bright crimson or scarlet flowers. Our stock is raised from seed we collected in steep, rocky, overgrazed pastureland above the town of La Carolina, in San Luis Province, Argentina. This low-growing warm climate perennial should be planted in a sunny location in well-drained soil and kept free of competing plants. It could be a rock garden plant in warm regions. Flowers don't get any more red than this !!
Ironweed earns the name twice over. The stems are stiff enough to stand through a hurricane season without staking, and the seedheads that follow the flowers rust to the exact color of weathered iron. But the reason to grow Vernonia noveboracensis is the purple: not the tidy lavender of garden asters but a saturated, almost fluorescent violet that arrives in late July and holds into October, riding five to eight feet up on strong green stems above a mass of long, finely toothed leaves. Few native perennials carry a color this pure so late in the year.
This is a large imposing native perennial with pointed, toothed leaves 2'- 4'long in whorls around stem. It bears tiny pink flowers in dense racemes in late summer. Plant it in moist, fertile soil in a sunny site. A good plant for the back of the border. Native to eastern North America.
Mapleleaf viburnum does what almost no other native shrub will do: thrive in dry shade. Most of the eastern American natives that gardeners reach for, serviceberry, red buckeye, sweetshrub, oakleaf hydrangea, want steady moisture and at least a few hours of sun. Viburnum acerifolium is the one that walks into the dry, root-tangled, low-light pocket beneath an established oak or beech and simply gets on with the job. The native range is genuinely vast, from New Brunswick south to Florida and west to Texas and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in upland forests, rocky slopes, and the edges of bluffs, making this one of the most widespread and most underused native shrubs of eastern North America.
This deciduous shrub with small serrated leaves, white flowers, and blue-black fruit may be a Deep South form or subspecies of Arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum). Taxonomy confusing and sometimes listed as Viburnum dentatum var. scabrellum, Viburnum semitomentosum, etc., it is found on more well drained upland sites than where one would expect to find Viburnum dentatum.
Rare and little known evergreen shrub with dense habit. Small leathery leaves are glossy and emerge copper colored and mature to dark green. Steel blue fruit in fall. Introduced into England from the Himalayas in 1904 by Kingdon Ward and sometimes known as Viburnum wardii. We find no common name but "atrocyaneum" means "very deep blue".
'Chindo' is a bold, glossy-leaved evergreen viburnum, a vigorous selection grown for both ornamental drama and Southern toughness, hung in season with cascading clusters of brilliant red fruit. Few broadleaf evergreens offer this combination of shine, structure, and seasonal display at so substantial a scale.
This Viburnum is an attractive shrub with lustrous dark green deciduous leaves of firm texture. The creamy white flower clusters appear in spring. The leaves don't scorch in full sun and it appears to be drought tolerant. This is a horticultural selection of the very rare and perhaps endangered Viburnum bracteatum which is found on limestone soils in the NW Georgia - NE Alabama area.
The cinnamon-leaf viburnum is one of the great broadleaf evergreens of the genus, a substantial, dignified shrub from the mountain forests of western China, where mist gathers in the valleys and plants grow with quiet endurance. The species name cinnamomifolium means leaves like cinnamon, for the large, glossy, deeply triple-veined leaves that echo those of a true cinnamon tree, tooled and leathery as fine bookbinding. This is a plant that holds the line rather than blooms and fades with the hour.
