This is a Woodlanders plant in the most literal sense: selected, named, and introduced to the American nursery trade by this nursery, in this town, decades ago. The cultivar now carries our name across the country. One Green World in Oregon, Cistus on Sauvie Island, Greenleaf as a national wholesaler, Wilson Bros in three-gallon, Cloud Mountain Farm in Washington, Dancing Oaks in the Willamette Valley, and dozens of regional nurseries from Louisiana to Idaho all carry the plant. Few cultivars in American horticulture are so permanently tied to a single small nursery in Aiken, South Carolina. To buy here is to buy at the source.
An evergreen bottlebrush with arching to pendulous branches and dark green, lance-shaped leaves, Callistemon paludosus carries terminal, pink bottlebrush spikes freely in midsummer, an unusual color in a genus mostly given to red. Relatively cold-hardy for a bottlebrush, this is a graceful, easy shrub for a hot, sunny spot.
Of the thirty-odd bottlebrushes, this is the one Australian growers reach for when they want the word spectacular to mean something. Callistemon phoeniceus is endemic to the southwest corner of Western Australia, a hard, sandy, summer-dry country, and the shrub arrives in spring and summer carrying scarlet brushes four to six inches long, each one finished with a dark tip so the whole spike reads as red shading into near-black. The leaves are the other half of the appeal: thick, stiff, and distinctly blue-green, holding that cool grey cast right through the year, which makes the red land harder than red on ordinary green ever does.
Pine-leaved bottlebrush earns the name honestly: the foliage is fine, stiff, and needle-like, closer to a young pine than to the broad leaves of most bottlebrushes, and the whole shrub stands upright and a little spare, which is part of the charm. Native to southeastern Australia, this species is uncommon in cultivation in the southern United States, so growing one is a small act of plant collecting.
An exceptional cold-hardy bottlebrush, Callistemon rigidus 'Clemson' is a compact to medium evergreen shrub hung with brilliant red, brush-like flowers that bloom heavily in late spring and often rebloom through summer. Native to Australia, this selection defies expectations for the genus by thriving outdoors in upstate South Carolina, where winters are usually too cold for bottlebrushes.
The weeping bottlebrush is the one most Americans have already met without knowing the name, a small tree of crimson brushes and long hanging branchlets planted through Florida and the Gulf Coast until a hard freeze thins the ranks and somebody plants them again. In the wild Callistemon viminalis runs down the eastern edge of Australia from Cape York into northeastern New South Wales, and almost always along water: creek banks, seasonal channels, the damp sand beside a watercourse. That habitat explains the two things that set this species apart from the rest of the genus. The branches hang rather than stand, giving the whole tree a fountain habit that carries even out of flower, and the roots will tolerate heavier ground and less than perfect drainage, which almost no other bottlebrush will.
Among the many bottlebrushes, most of which flower fire-engine red, Callistemon viridiflorus goes a different way, opening in greenish yellow brushes over short, prickly evergreen leaves. Native to Tasmania, this is one of the cold-hardier members of the genus and may hold to zone 7.
Callistemon brachyandrus, the prickly or desert bottlebrush, comes from the arid inland of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, and wears that origin in every part. The short, stiff, needle-fine leaves end in a sharp point and give the shrub the prickly common name, a fine gray-green texture quite unlike the broad-leaved bottlebrushes. The brushes are the real surprise: deep red stamens tipped with yellow anthers, so each flower looks dusted with gold, and they open in summer, after most other bottlebrush have finished.
Callistemon citrinus, the crimson bottlebrush, is the plant most people picture when they hear the common name, and the parent of a good share of the red-flowered selections in the trade. The lance-shaped leaves emerge coppery and pink, harden to a soft gray-green, and give up a clean lemon scent when bruised, the trait the species epithet records. Bright crimson brushes, four inches or so, come in a heavy flush in late spring and then intermittently through the warm months, each one a generous well of nectar for hummingbirds and bees.
Callistemon macropunctatus, the scarlet bottlebrush, is a plant of the drier inland country of southeastern Australia, and the toughness shows. The narrow, sharply pointed leaves are studded with large oil glands, the big dots the species epithet names, and release a sharp, resinous scent when crushed. Flowering runs from olive-green in bud to a deep scarlet as the brushes open across late spring and summer, vivid against the stiff foliage.
Callistemon salignus, the willow bottlebrush, is the graceful one, a large shrub or small tree hung with narrow, willow-like leaves and lit each spring by silky new growth of bright pink to copper, the plant's finest moment. The brushes that follow are soft and pale, creamy white to lemon, sometimes flushed pink in selected forms, and the trunk carries a beautiful papery white bark that peels away in thin sheets. Few bottlebrush read as elegant; the willow bottlebrush does.
