{"title":"Edibles","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn edible garden does not have to look like a vegetable plot. The trees, shrubs, and vines gathered here carry flowers, foliage, and fruit worth a place in any ornamental border, and hand you a harvest besides. We favor the kinds suited to Southern gardens, at home in heat and humidity, and we lean toward the uncommon: heritage fruit and rare edibles you will not find on a grocery shelf.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the landscape these plants work as ornament first and orchard second. A fruiting tree gives shade and spring bloom; a berrying shrub earns a place in the border on looks alone; an edible vine turns a fence or arbor into something productive. Sited among the rest of the garden rather than fenced off in rows, they let a small property carry both beauty and food.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe grow edibles because a productive garden is a resilient one. Fruiting plants feed pollinators in bloom and birds and people in season, deepen a household's connection to what it eats, and reward patience with decades of return. Many are tough, low-input choices that fit a water-wise, regionally adapted garden rather than fighting against the climate.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSite fruiting plants for sun and good drainage, and give them room to size up. Underplant with something water-wise from our \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/drought-tolerant-plants\"\u003eDrought-Tolerant Plants\u003c\/a\u003e, reach into \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/sub-tropicals\"\u003eSub-Tropicals\u003c\/a\u003e for warm-climate rarities, and train productive climbers with help from our \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/vines\"\u003eVines\u003c\/a\u003e collection. Read each listing for zone and pollination notes, since a few of these crops fruit best with a partner nearby.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"allium-cernuum","title":"Allium cernuum","description":"\u003cp\u003eA graceful native onion, \u003cem\u003eAllium cernuum\u003c\/em\u003e, the nodding onion, lifts loose clusters of pink to lavender, bell-shaped flowers that bend over in a soft arc at the top of slender stems, swaying through mid and late summer above tufts of grassy, blue-green foliage. The nodding habit gives the plant a particular charm, and the flowers draw native bees, butterflies, and other pollinators in good numbers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative across much of North America, including the piedmont and mountains of the mid-Atlantic, the nodding onion thrives in well-drained soil and full sun to part shade, tolerating rocky slopes and dry hillsides once established. Deer and rabbits leave the oniony foliage alone. The mildly oniony leaves and bulbs are edible, with a long record in Indigenous cooking and folk medicine, and the city of Chicago is thought to take the name from an Algonquin word for this wild onion. Our most ornamental native onion, easy and long-lived.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"1 Quart","offer_id":43055335800947,"sku":"ALLI-CERN-01Q","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"1 Gallon","offer_id":43055335833715,"sku":"ALLI-CERN-01G","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/AlliumcernuumMBGWoodlanders5.jpg?v=1747170635"},{"product_id":"asimina-triloba","title":"Asimina triloba","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe pawpaw is a small, tropical-looking deciduous tree with large, drooping leaves and the largest edible fruit native to this country. In mid to late summer the green, mango-shaped fruit softens to a fragrant custard, banana and mango in one, around rows of big dark seeds, relished by people and raccoons alike. The crushed leaves carry a distinctive odor, and the whole tree reads more like the tropics than a temperate woodland.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAsimina triloba\u003c\/em\u003e sends up many root suckers and forms colonies, the natural way of the species, and prefers deep, rich soil and dependable moisture. Pawpaw is self-sterile, so plant more than one, ideally unrelated seedlings, for cross-pollination and a good fruit set. Some nurseries offer named varieties selected for larger or sweeter fruit. Native to the eastern United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive pawpaw a sheltered, fertile spot in sun to part shade, with young trees appreciating some shade and mature ones fruiting best in sun. The tree anchors an edible landscape, a woodland edge, or a naturalized planting, and serves as the sole host of the zebra swallowtail butterfly. The soft gold fall color is a quiet bonus.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057813721203,"sku":"ASIM-TRIL-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/AsiminatrilobaJimRobbins1.jpg?v=1783096578"},{"product_id":"callicarpa-americana","title":"Callicarpa americana","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe genus name says it: \u003cem\u003eCallicarpa\u003c\/em\u003e, from the Greek kallos, beauty, and karpos, fruit, beautiful fruit, a genus named for exactly what it does. \u003cem\u003eCallicarpa americana\u003c\/em\u003e, the American beautyberry, is the southeastern native that gives the genus a calling card. From late August into November, the plant sets dense clusters of small drupes in a luminous magenta-purple, a color that registers as almost unreal in the late-summer landscape, somewhere between fuchsia and amethyst, with no real precedent among native fruits. The berries gather in tight whorls around the stem at every leaf node, all the way down the arching branches, so that a mature shrub in October looks less like a shrub bearing fruit than a ribbon of purple glass beads strung along the branches.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe species ranges across the southeastern coastal plain and Piedmont, west into Texas and northern Mexico, with outlier populations in Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Cuba, growing along forest edges, in pine flatwoods, on old-field margins, and in the dappled understory of mixed hardwood-pine canopies. So much a part of the southern landscape that to many southerners the beautyberry feels native to memory itself, the shrub has only really been embraced as a garden plant in recent decades. William Bartram, the eighteenth-century Quaker naturalist whose Travels (1791) remains the foundational botanical document of the American South, described Callicarpa in the Carolina and Georgia woods he walked, and the southern poet Kathryn Stripling Byer used the beautyberry in her poem Beautyberry as a figure for endurance, beauty in the face of adversity, a fair description of how the plant actually lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe other story is more recent. In the rural Mississippi of his grandfather's generation, the USDA botanist Charles Bryson had been told that crushed beautyberry leaves, rubbed on the skin or stuffed under a farm animal's harness, kept biting insects away. Bryson passed the tip to Charles Cantrell, a chemist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Oxford, Mississippi, and Cantrell and colleagues isolated three terpenoid compounds from the leaves: callicarpenal, intermedeol, and spathulenol. In peer-reviewed testing against the mosquitoes that carry yellow fever and malaria, callicarpenal worked at roughly 79 percent the strength of DEET; against the blacklegged ticks that carry Lyme disease, and lone star ticks, callicarpenal was statistically equal to DEET; against fire ants, also effective. The USDA patented the compounds. The grandfather was right.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, the American beautyberry is a forgiving, durable, slightly unruly deciduous shrub, four to six feet tall and as wide, with an open, arching frame that takes a light pruning in late winter to stay compact and fruit heavily. The shrub blooms and fruits on new wood, so cutting back to twelve or eighteen inches each spring sharply increases the show. The early-summer flowers are small and pale lavender-pink, pretty up close, easy to miss from a distance, and busy with native bees and small butterflies. But the fruit is the event: more than forty species of southeastern birds work the clusters in fall and winter, from bobwhite and cardinals to mockingbirds and thrashers, along with deer, raccoons, foxes, and opossums. The berries are mildly edible, long used for jelly, though the wildlife usually clears them faster than any cook could.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor the native gardener, the wildlife gardener, the ethnobotanist, or anyone who wants to plant a real piece of the flora of the American South: the plant Bartram saw, the plant Bryson's grandfather knew, the plant the USDA validated.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/blogs\/news\/the-tale-of-callicarpa-americana-beauty-berries-and-botanical-magic\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eClick here for our in-depth article on this plant.\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057820274803,"sku":"CALL-AMER-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Callicarpa_americana_close_up.jpg?v=1777573718"},{"product_id":"castanea-mollissima","title":"Castanea mollissima","description":"\u003cp\u003eFew trees carry as much historical weight as the chestnuts, and \u003cem\u003eCastanea mollissima\u003c\/em\u003e carries it gracefully. This handsome, wide-spreading Chinese native stepped into the void left by one of the great ecological tragedies of the twentieth century, the near-total collapse of the American chestnut, and has been feeding people, wildlife, and the soil ever since. Come fall, the spiny husks crack open to reveal some of the largest, sweetest chestnuts a gardener can grow.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe story behind the tree is worth knowing. When chestnut blight (\u003cem\u003eCryphonectria parasitica\u003c\/em\u003e) arrived from Asia in 1904, the disease moved through eastern North America with devastating efficiency, killing an estimated four billion \u003cem\u003eCastanea dentata\u003c\/em\u003e trees within fifty years and erasing an entire ecological keystone, mast producer, wildlife anchor, and timber tree from the canopy. Native to China and Korea and having evolved alongside the blight for millennia, \u003cem\u003eCastanea mollissima\u003c\/em\u003e carries a natural resistance the American chestnut never had the chance to develop.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat this tree brings to the garden is considerable on its own terms: vigorous and generous growth, broad and leafy, casting real shade by midsummer, and in autumn a harvest that can be genuinely abundant. The nuts are large by chestnut standards, rich-flavored, and surprisingly versatile in the kitchen, and the wildlife find them just as compelling, honestly probably more so. A living thread connecting the ecological history of two continents, and a deeply worthwhile addition to any landscape with room to let the canopy breathe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhotos courtesy of Jim Robbins and Cathy Dewitt.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057828794483,"sku":"CAST-MOLL-01G","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Castanea_mollissima__jimrobbinswoodlanders2.jpg?v=1773603726"},{"product_id":"citrus-taiwanica","title":"Citrus taiwanica","description":"\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and Citrus taiwanica is one of the tougher evergreens of the group. A vigorous, upright, spreading, thorny tree, the Taiwan orange bears sour tangerine-to-orange fruit that is both ornamental and useful, the base of a very tasty ade. One of the hardier evergreen citrus, the tree sets good crops here in Aiken, South Carolina.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to Taiwan, this selection came to Woodlanders years ago from Major Collins of Tifton, Georgia, a pioneer in growing cold-hardy citrus, a nice thread of Southern citrus history. Grow the Taiwan orange in full sun and sharp, well-drained soil, in the ground through zones 8 to 11 or in a large container farther north, and site the tree back from paths and seating, since the thorns are formidable.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoto courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.danlepard.com\/citrus-taiwanica-bitter-oranges\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDan Lepard\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057835151475,"sku":"CITR-TAIW-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/citrustaiwanica-1.jpg?v=1722697967"},{"product_id":"citrus-reticulata-keraji","title":"Citrus reticulata 'Keraji'","description":"\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and the Keraji mandarin is a favorite of the group. A medium-sized evergreen tree with the usual fragrant white citrus flowers, Keraji follows them with what Tom McClendon, in \u003cem\u003eHardy Citrus for the Southeast\u003c\/em\u003e, calls \"small, yellow, flattened tangerines that have a sweet lemonade taste unlike any other citrus fruits.\" That flavor is the whole reason to grow the tree, and Keraji has proven quite hardy in Augusta, Georgia since 1997.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, grow Keraji in full sun and sharp, well-drained soil, in the ground through zones 8 to 10 or in a large container to overwinter farther north. Nearly thornless and reliably productive, the tree suits an edible landscape, a sunny border, or a patio pot, and perfumes the air in spring. Site where the fragrant bloom and the sweet-lemonade fruit can both be enjoyed, and keep a plant near the kitchen for mandarins off the branch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhotos by George Mitchell, David Karp and Toni Siebert, CVC.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057835675763,"sku":"CITR-RETI-KERA-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Citrusreticulata_Keraji_Woodlanders.jpg?v=1731010759"},{"product_id":"citrus-reticulata-var-austera-rangpur","title":"Citrus 'Rangpur'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Rangpur is not truly a lime at all, but Indian gardeners have used the fruit as one for more than five hundred years. \u003cem\u003eCitrus\u003c\/em\u003e x \u003cem\u003elimonia\u003c\/em\u003e, an old natural hybrid of mandarin and citron, bears small, round, deep orange fruits that look like tangerines and taste fiercely sour, with the aromatic bite that makes a fine lime substitute for cooking, cocktails, and marmalade. In India the fruit goes by surkh nimboo, the red lime, prized for exactly that intense, tart juice.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEvergreen, fragrant in flower, and unusually cold hardy for a citrus of lime character, the Rangpur is widely grown as a dooryard fruit in California yet remains little known in the southern United States, where the plant deserves a wider audience. Woodlanders offers this old hybrid for gardeners curious about hardy, useful citrus beyond the familiar.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, grow the Rangpur in full sun and sharp, well-drained soil, in the ground in the warmer parts of zone 8 with a sheltered spot, or in a large container that can move under cover for hard freezes. The white spring blossom is sweetly fragrant, the orange fruit both ornamental and useful, so site where flower and fruit can both be enjoyed. A productive, good-looking plant, and a conversation piece for the cook who wants limes off the branch.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057835741299,"sku":"CITR-RETI-AUST-RANG-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1958.jpg?v=1720137293"},{"product_id":"citrus-reticulata-changsha","title":"Citrus reticulata 'Changsha'","description":"\u003cp\u003eA very old Chinese cultivar, almost certainly named for the capital of Hunan province where the fruit has been grown for centuries, and quite possibly carrying \u003cem\u003eC. ichangensis\u003c\/em\u003e somewhere in the parentage. That suspected ancestry would account for the cold tolerance that has made Changsha the parent stock for nearly every modern hardy citrus breeding program of consequence: Wayne Hanna's seedless work at UGA Tifton, the Arctic Frost satsuma cross out of Texas, and others still in trial.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWidely considered the hardiest sweet-fruited mandarin in cultivation. Mature, acclimated trees shrug off 10 degrees Fahrenheit without permanent injury, and reports from the Dallas area document survival into the single digits. Here in Aiken the tree has come through every winter so far, bearing reliably and early, often within a year or two of planting.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHabit and bloom\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe tree is upright and twiggy, eventually 10 to 15 feet, with narrow willow-like leaves and intensely fragrant spring flowers that the honeybees find before you do. Spines are present on the trunk and main scaffolds, but the fruiting wood is essentially thornless.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe fruit\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRipens late fall into early winter. Deep orange, around four inches across, flat-bottomed with shallow pumpkin-like grooves. The rind sits loose on the flesh and slightly bumpy, peeling away in one piece.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe flesh is sweet and low-acid, with none of the kerosene or bitter notes that betray most cold-hardy citrus as compromise plants. This is genuinely a fruit you eat out of hand.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fruit is also genuinely seedy. Count on that.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne word of caution\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe harvest window is short. Pick promptly as the fruit colors up. Left to hang, Changsha goes puffy and watery and loses what makes the fruit worth growing.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057835872371,"sku":"CITR-RETI-CHAN-01G","price":46.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Citrus_reticulata_Changsha_Woodlanders.jpg?v=1731555810"},{"product_id":"citrus-reticulata-nuclem","title":"Citrus reticulata 'NuClem'","description":"\u003cp\u003eNuClem is a special clementine among the cold-hardy citrus, a nucellar selection of the familiar clementine mandarin. Our friend and citrus guru Tom McClendon, who shared this one with us, explains it best: \"NuClem is a nucellar Clementine, meaning that it comes true from seed. Most Clementines are polyembryonic, meaning that seeds will almost always produce hybrids with other citrus nearby. NuClem also is distinctive in its cold-hardiness, having proven reliably hardy in Montezuma, GA, making it probably on par with Satsuma. Fruit is globular, about two inches in diameter, with a mildly adherent peel more like an orange than a mandarin. Fruit quality is excellent.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike other citrus, NuClem is an evergreen tree with fragrant white spring flowers, best given a sandy, well-drained soil and watered as needed. In gardens where the tree is borderline hardy, plant in a spot sheltered from north and northwest winds, and give extra protection during hard freezes. Grow in the ground through zones 8 to 10, or in a large container to overwinter farther north.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057836068979,"sku":"CITR-RETI-NUCL-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-2152.jpg?v=1720137313"},{"product_id":"citrus-hybrid-yuzuquat","title":"Citrus hybrid 'Yuzuquat'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Yuzuquat is a tri-generic hybrid, a curiosity even among unusual citrus. One parent is the yuzu, itself a cross of \u003cem\u003eCitrus ichangensis\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eCitrus reticulata\u003c\/em\u003e; the other is the 'Nagami' kumquat, \u003cem\u003eFortunella margarita\u003c\/em\u003e. From that three-way pedigree comes an attractive evergreen citrus that bears sour, juicy, lemon-like fruits about the size of a chicken egg.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fruits make a fine substitute for the common commercial lemon, bright and aromatic in the kitchen, and the tree is considerably more cold hardy than a true lemon, an important difference for Southern gardeners. The Yuzuquat thrives and bears heavily in Augusta, Georgia, proof of a constitution well beyond the usual lemon.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, grow the Yuzuquat in full sun and sharp, well-drained soil, in the ground through zones 8 and 9 or in a large container to overwinter farther north. Site where the fragrant white spring blossom and the yellow fruit can both be enjoyed, and keep a plant near the kitchen for a hardy lemon off the branch. A productive, good-looking citrus for the cook and the collector alike.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057836429427,"sku":"CITR-HYBR-YUZU-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-2093.jpg?v=1720137340"},{"product_id":"citrus-citrus-x-citrus-aurantifolia-x-fortunella-japonica-eustis","title":"Eustis Limequat","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe limequat was born of catastrophe. After the twin freezes of 1894 and 1895 laid waste to Florida's groves, Walter T. Swingle of the United States Department of Agriculture set out to breed citrus that could shrug off a cold snap, and in 1909 he crossed the sharp little West Indian or Key lime (Citrus aurantifolia) with the round Marumi kumquat (Fortunella japonica). Named and introduced in 1913 alongside a sister seedling called Lakeland, the Eustis limequat stands among the first successful intergeneric citrus hybrids, living proof that two separate genera could be wedded and still bear generous fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe name is a plain-spoken marriage of words, lime joined to kumquat, and the epithet remembers the town of Eustis in central Florida, near the country where Swingle did his work. The kumquat parent contributes far more than a little hardiness. From Fortunella comes the thin, sweet, wholly edible rind that sets a limequat apart from any ordinary lime, so that the whole fruit, skin and all, can be dropped in the mouth or the pot.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fruit themselves are small and oval, no larger than a big olive, ripening from deep green to a clear yellow across late fall and winter, a season when little else in the garden offers such brightness. Bite through the fragrant peel and the pulp within is fiercely tart and juicy, all Key lime, tempered by the honeyed skin. Cooks prize the Eustis for marmalade and preserves, for a squeeze over fish, and above all for the bar, where a limequat stands in for lime with a sweeter, more aromatic edge. The waxy white blossoms that precede the crop carry the heady orange-blossom perfume common to citrus, sweetening a porch or a greenhouse in spring.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden the Eustis makes a tidy, naturally compact evergreen, reaching perhaps six to eight feet in a pot and taller in open ground where winters allow. Glossy leaves and a rounded, well-furnished habit keep the tree handsome even out of fruit, and a well-grown plant earns a place beside a sunny door, on a terrace, or in a conservatory. Hardier than a true lime yet no lover of hard frost, the Eustis wants full sun, a free-draining soil or a good container mix, and steady water; where winters bite, grow the plant in a pot that can be carried under cover until the cold has passed.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057836560499,"sku":"CITR-CITR-CITR-AURA-01G","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/CitrusEustisWoodlanders1.jpg?v=1752516732"},{"product_id":"citrus-citrus-x-citrus-ichangensis-x-citrus-grandis-maxima","title":"Ichang \"Lemon\"","description":"\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders has long led the way in offering cold-hardy citrus, the kinds that carry fruit well beyond the usual citrus belt, and Ichang Lemon is a favorite of the group. The plant grows as a medium, evergreen small tree with large leaves on winged petioles and thorny branches, opens the fragrant white flowers typical of citrus in spring, and follows with very large, lemon-yellow, fragrant fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDespite the name, Ichang Lemon is not a true lemon but a hardy hybrid, Citrus × wilsonii, a cross of the Ichang papeda, Citrus ichangensis, with the pomelo, Citrus maxima. The Ichang papeda parent, native to the cold hills around Yichang in central China, is one of the most frost-tolerant citrus known, and passes that toughness on. Seed reached Western growers through the plant explorer Frank Meyer in 1919, and in China the fragrant fruit was once carried in the hand like a living perfume, earning the name shangjuan, the fragrant ball.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the kitchen the large, juicy, seedy fruit stands in for lemons: the bright, tangy juice, with subtle earthy notes, makes fine lemonade and marmalade, and a pie built from these fruit is, in our experience, perhaps better than the real thing. The heavy crop ripens through late fall and winter, exactly when a fresh, tart citrus is most welcome, and the flowers and fruit both carry a clean, far-reaching fragrance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe real appeal is hardiness. Ichang Lemon shrugs off cold to around ten to fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, and has fruited outdoors far north of the citrus belt, as far as New Jersey. Give the tree full sun and well-drained soil in the warm South, or grow the plant in a large pot to move under cover when hard freezes threaten. As a specimen the glossy evergreen leaves, fragrant spring bloom, and heavy gold fruit all earn a place near a patio or entry where the scent can be enjoyed.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057836593267,"sku":"ICHA-LEMO-CITR-ICHA-01G","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Ichang_Lemon_Woodlanders2.jpg?v=1731724944"},{"product_id":"citrus-citrus-x-citrus-x-meyeri-meyer","title":"Citrus x meyeri \"Meyer\" (Meyer Lemon)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Meyer lemon is the great container citrus, beloved for thin-skinned, deep yellow-orange fruit that is sweeter and less acidic than a true lemon, and for fragrant, purple-tinged white flowers that come more than once a year. A small evergreen tree, the Meyer is thought to be a natural hybrid of lemon and some other citrus, probably a sweet orange or mandarin, which accounts for the mellow, almost floral flavor that has made the fruit a favorite of cooks.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe lemon carries a bit of history: American plant explorer Frank N. Meyer of the USDA found the tree near Beijing, China, in 1908 and brought it back to the United States, where the fruit has been prized ever since. Hardier than a true lemon but still frost-tender, the Meyer is best grown as a container plant in most of the country, moved under cover before hard freezes, and set outdoors in full sun for the warm months.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, grow the Meyer in full sun and sharp, well-drained soil, in the ground only in zones 9 to 11, or in a large pot elsewhere. Site where the fragrant bloom can be enjoyed, keep a plant near the kitchen, and enjoy a steady supply of the best lemon a cook can grow.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057836724339,"sku":"CITR-X-MEYE-01G","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1882.jpg?v=1720137362"},{"product_id":"citrus-x-citrus-poncirus-trifoliata-x-citrus-sinensis-rusk","title":"Citrus 'Rusk'","description":"\u003cp\u003eAmong the very first of the citranges, \u003cem\u003eCitrus\u003c\/em\u003e 'Rusk' dates to 1897, when Walter Swingle crossed a Ruby orange with the tough, cold-hardy trifoliate orange, \u003cem\u003ePoncirus trifoliata\u003c\/em\u003e, in the great effort to breed citrus that could take a freeze. The result is a vigorous, tall-growing, notably hardy tree, evergreen to semi-evergreen, and dense with the distinctive three-parted trifoliate leaves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fruit is deep orange and juicy, with, in the old description, a \"sprightly acid flavor and only slightly bitter,\" a citrange that \"approaches edibility more closely than most.\" Straight from the branch the flavor is sharp, but diluted juice with a little sugar makes a good drink, bright and refreshing. This is a plant for the collector of hardy citrus and the gardener who enjoys a bit of citrus history on the tree.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, grow 'Rusk' in full sun and sharp, well-drained soil, hardier than most citrus and holding through zone 7 winters in a sheltered spot, or in a large container farther north. The fragrant white spring blossom and the deep orange autumn fruit both earn a place; site where they can be enjoyed, and give room for a vigorous, upright tree.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057836789875,"sku":"CITR-PONC-TRIF-RUSK-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-974.jpg?v=1720137369"},{"product_id":"citrus-x-citrus-poncirus-trifoliata-x-citrus-sinensis-troyer","title":"Citrus 'Troyer'","description":"\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and the Troyer citrange is a classic of the kind. A cross of the Washington navel orange and the inedible but iron-hardy trifoliate orange, \u003cem\u003ePoncirus trifoliata\u003c\/em\u003e, the Troyer was raised in 1909 under the direction of the great citrus breeder Walter Swingle, and later named for A. M. Troyer of Fairhope, Alabama, where the tree first bore fruit, a nice southern footnote for a hardy citrus.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Troyer grows as a vigorous, upright small tree with slender, thorny branches and semi-evergreen foliage, hung in season with fragrant white flowers and then with abundant, baseball-sized oranges. The fruit is too sharp to eat straight, but diluted and sweetened the juice makes a tasty, refreshing citrus ade, and the heavy crop is a conversation piece in a southern garden. Long valued as an understock for commercial citrus, the Troyer earns a place on merit of hardiness and looks alike.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, grow the Troyer in full sun and sharp, well-drained soil, in the ground through zones 8 and 9 or in a large container farther north. Give room for an upright, thorny tree, site the plant back from paths and seating, and place where the spring bloom and the bright autumn fruit can be enjoyed. A hardy, productive, good-looking citrus for the collector and the curious.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057836855411,"sku":"CITR-PONC-TRIF-TROY-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1477.jpg?v=1720137372"},{"product_id":"citrus-x-citrus-poncirus-trifoliata-x-citrus-paradisi-dunstan","title":"Citrumelo 'Dunstan'","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCitrumelo\u003c\/em\u003e 'Dunstan' is a hardy heirloom hybrid of the rugged trifoliate orange, \u003cem\u003eCitrus trifoliata\u003c\/em\u003e, and the sunlit grapefruit, \u003cem\u003eCitrus paradisi\u003c\/em\u003e, and from that unlikely marriage comes a fruit and tree of real merit. The golden-yellow globes swell to nearly four inches across, fragrant, and, touched with sugar, carry the tart refreshment of a grapefruit picked a little shy of ripe. Here is fruit both rustic and refined, bred for survival yet still hinting at the orchard.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrowers have long rated 'Dunstan' the best of the trifoliate hybrids, often called the best overall cross with fifty percent trifoliate parentage, and the praise rests as much on constitution as on flavor. Where ordinary citrus fail at the first hard frost, 'Dunstan' endures, among the hardiest of all citrus, holding ground in southern gardens where grapefruit and orange could never survive. For anyone after both sustenance and experiment, here is a treasure: very hard to find, and worth the search.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe tree grows small and handsome, with glossy green leaves that fall in autumn to leave a strong winter silhouette. Fragrant white blossoms open in spring, and by fall the yellow globes ripen into a harvest that is as much story as sustenance. In the garden, 'Dunstan' suits the adventurous grower, the historian of southern gardens, and the lover of hardy heirlooms; give full sun, sharp drainage, and shelter from the worst winter wind, and this small tree will reward the gamble.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057838329971,"sku":"CITR-DUNS-TRIF-PARA-01G","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Citrumelo_Dunstan_Woodlanders_1.jpg?v=1731863357"},{"product_id":"citrus-x-citrus-c-paradisi-x-poncirus-trifoliata-x-c-sinensis-u-s-119","title":"Citrus 'U.S. 119'","description":"\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and U.S. 119 is one of the most refined of the group. A complex USDA hybrid, a citrumelo crossed back with a sweet orange, the tree runs one quarter trifoliate orange, one quarter grapefruit, and one half sweet orange, a pedigree chosen to keep the toughness of the trifoliate while pushing the fruit toward genuine quality.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe result shows in the fruit: a handsome orange with a smooth peel and few seeds, the flesh sweet, in the old note, \"with just a touch of trifoliate aftertaste.\" Evergreen and good-looking, U.S. 119 has been said to be quite cold hardy, though, honestly, not yet widely tested, which makes the tree a fine candidate for the adventurous grower willing to trial a promising, little-known citrus.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, grow U.S. 119 in full sun and sharp, well-drained soil, in the ground through zones 8 to 10 or in a large container to overwinter farther north. Site where the fragrant white spring blossom and the smooth orange fruit can both be enjoyed, and pair with other hardy citrus in a collector's edible planting. A promising fruit for gardeners pushing citrus toward the colder edge of the map.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057838395507,"sku":"CITR-CITR-C-PARA-03G","price":86.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1827.jpg?v=1720137393"},{"product_id":"citrus-x-citrus-fortunella-hindsii-x-eustis-limequat-procimequat","title":"Procimequat","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe procimequat is a rare and fascinating citrus hybrid, born from a botanical marriage of the Eustis limequat (itself a cross of kumquat and lime) and the Hong Kong kumquat (\u003cem\u003eFortunella hindsii\u003c\/em\u003e). The result is a precocious, compact plant that combines the zesty lime tang of the limequat parent with the tiny, ornamental charm of the wild kumquats, all on a frame small enough for a patio pot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe fruit is small, bright orange, and marble-sized, ripening abundantly on even the youngest plants. The thin rind is edible and the aromatic juice pleasantly tart, which makes the procimequat a favorite of culinary adventurers and a natural citrus garnish for cocktails, marinades, or a cold cerveza on a hot afternoon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA naturally dwarf citrus, the procimequat is ideal for containers, small gardens, patios, and sunny kitchen courtyards. The plant flowers and fruits prolifically, often within the first year or two, and stays easily at two to four feet with minimal pruning. Fragrant white flowers, attractive foliage, and heavy fruiting make the plant a joy to grow even in tight spaces.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrow the procimequat in full sun and sharp, acid, well-drained soil, in the ground through zones 8 to 10 or in a large container that can shelter under cover from hard frost farther north. Keep a plant near the kitchen door for fruit and fragrance close at hand, and water steadily through the growing season while never letting the roots stand wet.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057838526579,"sku":"CITR-CITR-FORT-HIND-01G","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-973.jpg?v=1720137397"},{"product_id":"citrus-x-fortunella-sunquat","title":"Sunquat Tree","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Sunquat began as an accident in a Beeville, Texas dooryard in the early 1940s, when a man named Leslie Cude noticed a seedling carrying fruit that looked like a small lemon and behaved like a kumquat. Walter Swingle, the great citrus authority of the day, took one look and guessed a cross of Meyer lemon and kumquat, which is where the name Lemonquat comes from and how it entered the collections as Citrus limon × Fortunella. The trouble is that the curators who have kept the tree at Riverside ever since have come to doubt him. The fruit, they think, points to a mandarin somewhere in the parentage rather than a lemon, which would make the plant a mandarinquat wearing the wrong label. Nobody has settled the question. The plant has gone out as Sunquat, Lemonquat, Lemondrop, and Marmaladequat, four names for one tree, each a different theory and not one of them proven. Asking a citrus to hold still long enough to be classified rather misunderstands the family.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat is not in dispute is the fruit, which comes round to faintly pear-shaped, an inch and a half to three inches across, about the size of a hen's egg, ripening from green to a clear orange-yellow. The peel is thin, soft, and sweet, the flesh sharply acidic beneath, and the whole thing is built to be eaten in hand, skin and all, the way you would a kumquat that had grown up. Picked early the fruit is all bright sourness. Left on the branch into late winter the fruit sweetens, and by March the balance tips toward something you can eat without flinching. Whatever you do not eat goes into marmalade, honest enough that one of the names is built around it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey were selected, in the first place, for gardeners whose lemons kept freezing, and that is still the practical case for growing one. They carry enough kumquat in them to take cold that would scorch a true lemon, into the mid-teens once established and dormant, while still handing you a usable acid fruit. They stay compact, six to ten feet in open ground and a good deal less in a pot, which is where most people north of the citrus belt will want the tree: out on the terrace through summer, carried to shelter before the first hard freeze. Give the tree full sun and a container that drains, a clay pot for preference, since the roots resent sitting wet. They are self-fertile, so a single plant fruits alone, and they bloom more than once a year, which means the scent comes back when you have stopped expecting it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA lemon for people who cannot grow lemons, wearing three spare names and answering to none of them. Few plants reward a cold porch, or an argument, quite so well.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057838657651,"sku":"CITR-FORT-SUNQ-01G","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Screenshot2025-10-17at6.45.22AM.png?v=1760698127"},{"product_id":"cornus-kousa","title":"Cornus kousa","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis elegant small tree carries a graceful, vase-shaped habit that rounds out with age. Blooming two to three weeks after \u003cem\u003eCornus florida\u003c\/em\u003e, the kousa dogwood opens striking, pointed flower bracts in late spring to early summer, extending the dogwood season. The bracts surround clusters of tiny true flowers in a star-like display that sets this dogwood apart.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn late summer come vibrant, raspberry-like fruits, red and rounded, that draw birds and are edible for people too, sweet-pulped if a little soft in texture. The exfoliating bark peels away in patches, revealing a mosaic of rich brown, gray, and tan that adds real winter beauty once the branches are bare.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNotably more drought-tolerant and more disease-resistant than \u003cem\u003eCornus florida\u003c\/em\u003e, the kousa dogwood suits a wide range of North American climates, at home in both city gardens and naturalized landscapes. Whether set as a standout specimen or woven into a border, this dogwood offers four seasons of interest, from lush foliage to flowers, fruit, and bark.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057847734387,"sku":"CORN-KOUS-01G","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/CornuskousaMBG4.jpg?v=1731871642"},{"product_id":"crataegus-opaca","title":"Crataegus opaca","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is a tree you harvest from a boat. \u003cem\u003eCrataegus opaca\u003c\/em\u003e, the western mayhaw, grows wild in the flooded bottoms of the Gulf Coastal Plain, the cypress sloughs and pond margins of east Texas, Louisiana, and the Deep South, and when their fruit ripens in late spring it drops straight into the water and floats. For generations Southern families went out in May with boats, nets, and scoops to gather the bobbing red haws off the surface, a fast three weeks of work that turned into a year's worth of jelly. The name says as much: mayhaw, for the month, and haw, the old word for hawthorn.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe jelly is the whole point, and it is genuinely famous. The fruit is a small coral pome, tart and loaded with pectin, kin to the apple and the rose, setting into a clear, bright, half-wild preserve that whole towns organize around. Colquitt, Georgia simply calls itself the Mayhaw Capital of the World and throws a festival every April; Louisiana made the tree its official state fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBefore any of that, in early spring, they smother their bare gray branches in clouds of white hawthorn bloom, early and generous, a gift to the first pollinators of the year. They were born in standing water but do not insist on it, and will settle happily into an ordinary garden given steady moisture. Plant one for the blossom, the birds, and the biscuits to come.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Bare Root","offer_id":42820418273395,"sku":"CRAT-OPAC-BARE","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"1 Gallon","offer_id":42820418306163,"sku":"CRAT-OPAC-01G","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/WEB-030891.jpg?v=1751031939"},{"product_id":"diospyros-virginiana","title":"Diospyros virginiana","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe botanical name reads like a compliment: \u003cem\u003eDiospyros\u003c\/em\u003e joins the Greek \u003cem\u003edios\u003c\/em\u003e, divine, to \u003cem\u003epyros\u003c\/em\u003e, grain, so the genus translates roughly as \"fruit of the gods,\" a lofty title for a tree that drops sweet, homely orange fruit onto the forest floor each autumn. The common name travels the other direction, plain and American, from the Powhatan word \u003cem\u003eputchamin\u003c\/em\u003e for a dried fruit, a reminder that Native peoples were drying persimmons into cakes long before the botanists arrived.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDiospyros virginiana\u003c\/em\u003e is a medium, deciduous tree of the ebony family, native across the eastern United States, pyramidal in youth and rounding with age. The deeply blocky, gray-black bark, cracked into neat squares like alligator hide, is one of the surest ways to know the tree in winter. Persimmon is dioecious, carrying male and female flowers on separate trees, and only the females bear fruit; the small, greenish-yellow, bell-shaped blooms of late spring are quiet but draw bees in numbers. We offer seedling trees of undetermined sex.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fruit is a lesson in patience. Bite one too soon and the tannins seize the whole mouth shut, which is exactly why generations of country children have dared each other to try. Left to ripen, often past the first frost, the same fruit turns to soft, honeyed pulp prized for puddings, breads, and preserves. Beyond the kitchen, persimmon has long served as a medicinal tree: the astringent inner bark was traditionally made into a wash for sore throats, and a vitamin-rich leaf tea was taken as a tonic. \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/blogs\/news\/american-persimmon-a-healing-gift\"\u003eLearn about the healing properties of the American Persimmon here.\u003c\/a\u003e The wood, meanwhile, is among the hardest in North America, dense enough that the heads of old golf clubs and the shuttles of textile looms were once turned from persimmon.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the landscape, give \u003cem\u003eDiospyros virginiana\u003c\/em\u003e room as a specimen shade tree, a wildlife tree at a woodland edge, or an anchor in an edible or native planting. Persimmon tolerates a wide range of soil and moisture and asks little once established, and the autumn fruit feeds deer, foxes, opossums, and birds as generously as the gardener. Set the tree where the ripe fruit can drop without staining a patio, and plant a known female, or a group of seedlings, if a crop is the goal.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoto courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.wildflower.org\/gallery\/result.php?id_image=45420\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAlan Cressler\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057860382835,"sku":"DIOS-VIRG-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Diospyrosvirginiana.png?v=1733437566"},{"product_id":"ehretia-anacua","title":"Ehretia anacua","description":"\u003cp\u003eAnacua, \u003cem\u003eEhretia anacua\u003c\/em\u003e, is one of the signature small trees of the south Texas brush country and the lower Rio Grande, a member of the borage family that goes by a small crowd of names. The rough, sandpapery upper surface of the leaves earns the tag sandpaper tree, while old-timers along the border call the tree anacua or, corrupted through generations, knockaway. Evergreen to semi-evergreen depending on the winter, the anacua holds dark green, leathery leaves that feel like fine grit under a thumb.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn spring, and often again after summer rains, the tree covers itself in dense two-to-three-inch panicles of small, white, sweetly fragrant flowers, a display heavy enough to look like a late snow and rich enough to draw clouds of bees. The flowers give way to small, round drupes about a quarter inch across that ripen from green through yellow to orange. The fruit is edible and pleasantly sweet, if a little mealy, and has long been eaten fresh or cooked into jellies, though people tend to lose the race to the birds and mammals that strip a fruiting anacua in short order.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnacua shifts shape with the site. On good ground with room and water the tree matures into a round-crowned specimen twenty to forty feet tall with handsome, flaking, cinnamon-and-gray bark, while on dry, poor soils the same species stays lower and suckers into a dense, multi-stemmed thicket. Both forms are useful: the single-trunk tree makes a tough, drought-proof shade or street tree for hot climates, and the suckering form reads as a wildlife hedge or screen. Let the anacua stand as a specimen where the spring bloom and the fruiting birds can be enjoyed, or plant a run of them for cover.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLittle troubles this tree. Native to south Texas and northeastern Mexico and hardy in USDA zones 8 through 11, the anacua takes full sun, tolerates a wide range of soils including thin, alkaline, caliche ground, and shrugs off heat and drought once established. Frost at the cold edge of the range may cut back young growth, but the tree returns. Uncommon in cultivation outside the native south Texas, the anacua deserves a wider audience among gardeners who want a tough, fragrant, wildlife-feeding native for difficult sites.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFruit picture courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.wildflower.org\/gallery\/result.php?id_image=28529\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eRachel Cywinski\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057864151155,"sku":"EHRE-ANAC-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-985.jpg?v=1720137979"},{"product_id":"eremocitrus-x-citrus-glauca-x-meyer-lemon","title":"'Razzlequat' Cold-Hardy Citrus","description":"\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders has long been a leader in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and the 'Razzlequat' is one of the odder and hardier of the lot. The plant is a cross between the Australian desert lime, \u003cem\u003eEremocitrus glauca\u003c\/em\u003e, a tough, drought- and cold-tolerant native of the arid Australian interior, and, most likely, the familiar 'Meyer' lemon. From the desert lime parent come thorny, wiry branches, small narrow gray-green leaves, and a hardiness and drought tolerance rare among citrus; from the lemon come size and flavor.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe small, lemon-shaped fruits are unlike any ordinary citrus. Only semi-segmented inside, the little round, juice-filled vesicles sit loose and separate easily, releasing a bright, distinctly sour juice. Southeastern citrus expert Tom McClendon put it plainly: \"They were tart but good, much like a lime and with no unpleasant aftertaste at all.\" The overall impression is closer to a wild lime than a lemon, useful anywhere a sharp, fragrant citrus juice is wanted.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn spring, and sometimes again in late summer, the plant carries fragrant white to pale pink citrus blossoms with the classic sweet perfume of the tribe, followed by the curious fruit. Compact, thorny, and wiry, the 'Razzlequat' makes an intriguing specimen for a hot, sunny spot, a conversation piece in an edible or collector's garden, or a container plant that can be moved under cover where winters bite hardest. The gray-green foliage and dense, spiny habit also lend the plant to an informal, fruiting hedge.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive the 'Razzlequat' full sun and sharp drainage, and the desert-lime blood will carry the plant through heat and dry spells that would sulk an ordinary lemon. Hardy in USDA zones 8 through 11 and among the more cold-tolerant citrus hybrids, the plant still appreciates protection from hard freezes, especially while young; gardeners at the cold edge often grow the 'Razzlequat' in a pot for easy winter shelter. For anyone drawn to unusual, tough, genuinely useful citrus, this is a rare and rewarding oddity. Photos courtesy of UCR.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057865527411,"sku":"EREM-GLAU-MEYE-LEMO-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/EremocitrusglaucaxMeyerlemonUCR1.png?v=1744301802"},{"product_id":"eriobotrya-japonica","title":"Eriobotrya japonica","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe loquat, \u003cem\u003eEriobotrya japonica\u003c\/em\u003e, is a handsome broadleaved evergreen of the rose family, kin to apples, pears, and hawthorns, grown for the bold foliage and the early, unusual fruit. Native to the warm-temperate hills of central China and cultivated in Japan for more than a thousand years, the loquat has traveled with settlers throughout the mild-winter world, from the Mediterranean to the American South, where old dooryard trees are a familiar sight. The large, leathery leaves, deeply veined and toothed along the edges, give the tree a lush, almost tropical presence year round.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe loquat keeps an upside-down calendar. Where most fruit trees bloom in spring, the loquat opens clusters of small, fragrant, cream-white flowers in late fall and early winter, filling cold air with a soft, sweet scent and feeding bees when little else is in flower. From those winter blooms come the fruits: small, oval, yellow to orange, with sweet-tart, honeyed flesh around a few large brown seeds, ripening in spring, months ahead of any other tree fruit. Whether a given year sets a heavy crop depends entirely on winter cold, since a hard freeze at or after flowering will take the blossoms and the fruit with them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the landscape the loquat pulls double duty as ornament and orchard. Left to grow, the tree makes a rounded, densely leafy small tree or large shrub, fifteen feet or more, excellent as an evergreen screen, a patio shade tree, or a bold-textured specimen against a wall. The fruit is best fresh off the branch but also makes fine jelly, jam, and preserves, and the trees carry a heavy crop where winters are kind. Give the loquat room, since the broad canopy and big leaves want space to look their best.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLoquats are easy in the right climate. Hardy in USDA zones 7 through 10, the tree wants full sun to part shade and fertile, well-drained soil, tolerates a range of ground so long as drainage is good, and shrugs off heat once established, though young trees and open flowers need protection from hard frost. Beyond the kitchen, loquat leaves have a long life in traditional Chinese and Japanese medicine, where they are known as pipa ye and brewed against coughs and chest complaints, an old use that modern research on the leaf's triterpenes continues to explore. Few small trees give so much: evergreen structure, winter fragrance, spring fruit, and a deep well of history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057865887859,"sku":"ERIO-JAPO-01G","price":18.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Eriobotrya_japonica__aNRTzyMHyegH.jpg?v=1743436212"},{"product_id":"acca-sellowiana","title":"Acca sellowiana","description":"\u003cp\u003eAcca sellowiana, the pineapple guava, is that rare plant that is handsome enough for the border and generous enough for the kitchen. It came to botanical notice through the German naturalist Friedrich Sellow, who collected it in southern Brazil in 1819, and it carries his name still; for years it was known, and is often still sold, as Feijoa sellowiana. Its true home is the subtropical highlands of southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and northern Argentina, and from there it has traveled to warm gardens the world over.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is an evergreen shrub of quiet good looks, with gray-green leaves that flash silver-white undersides in a breeze. In late spring it flowers, and the flowers are remarkable: thick, fleshy petals, white without and flushed purple within, surrounding a startling boss of long crimson stamens. The petals themselves are edible, sweet and faintly spicy, a treat to graze straight from the bush, and the birds and bees that come for them do the work of pollination. By late autumn the fruit ripens, oval and gray-green, with an aromatic flesh that tastes of pineapple, apple, and mint at once, eaten fresh from the skin or made into jam.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden it is endlessly useful: an informal evergreen hedge, a screen, a small multi-stemmed specimen, or the backbone of an edible landscape. It takes drought and coastal wind in stride, thrives across the warm South and into California, and asks only sun and free-draining soil. For the heaviest fruit set, grow more than one, since most plants crop best with a partner nearby.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057869787251,"sku":"ACCA-SELL-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Feijoasellowiana2.jpg?v=1723239109"},{"product_id":"ficus-carica-celeste","title":"Ficus carica 'Celeste'","description":"\u003cp\u003eFew fruits carry the weight of centuries quite like the common fig. Ficus carica, native to the sun-soaked hills of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, has graced gardens and tables since biblical times, and no member of the tribe is more beloved in the American South than 'Celeste', the little fig so sweet that growers have long called the tree the Sugar Fig.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis particular lineage of Ficus carica 'Celeste' comes to us through a story as rich as the fruit. The mother plant, long rooted in Many, Louisiana, was handed down through generations before making its way to east Texas. There Gail Ebner, wife of Aiken City Councilman Reggie Ebner, took cuttings from the family fig and carried them east to South Carolina. From those cherished cuttings come the plants we now offer, grown right here in Aiken soil.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Celeste' is a hardy, self-pollinating, deciduous fig that bears abundant small to medium fruit, light brown to purplish with a tightly closed eye that helps the crop resist spoilage from rain and insects. The fruit ripens in early to mid-summer and is prized for fresh eating and preserves, or simply plucked warm from the branch and eaten under the sky that ripened them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis fig thrives in USDA zones 7 to 10 and asks little beyond full sun, fertile well-drained soil, and a measure of patience. Once established, the tree shrugs off drought and heat and gives generously in return, and even the broad, deeply lobed leaves lend a touch of ancient grace to the Southern landscape.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat we offer is more than a plant. This is a living heirloom, rooted in Southern heritage, bearing fruit from a time when home and land were measured not only in acres but in stories passed down and branches well tended.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057869951091,"sku":"FICU-CARI-CELE-01G","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Ficus_carica_Celeste_leavefruit_CSmith_ccbyncnd20.jpg?v=1750342494"},{"product_id":"ficus-roxburghii","title":"Ficus roxburghii","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the forests of the Himalayan foothills and across monsoon Asia grows a fig of ancient bearing, Ficus roxburghii, known to botanists today as Ficus auriculata and to gardeners as the elephant-ear fig. This is no dainty exotic. In the tropics the plant makes a bold small tree; in the American South, where hard frost cuts back the top, the fig returns from the root each year as a heroic perennial, with a presence as memorable as a live oak draped in Spanish moss.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHere in the Deep South, where the soil runs sandy and red and winter knocks more gently, the elephant-ear fig has found a second home. Joe LeVert of Augusta, Georgia, a true Southern plantsman, first brought the plant to our attention; his thriving, root-hardy specimen, proven through many a Southern winter, became the mother of our current stock, a plant born of grit, heritage, and care.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe leaves are the glory, sometimes stretching fifteen inches or more across, round, glossy, and substantial, rising like lacquered shields to turn any bed into a living tapestry of the tropics. In the warmest gardens the fig also bears in the curious way called cauliflory, the fat, downy fruit erupting directly from the trunk and old wood rather than the twigs. Those figs are genuinely good, eaten fresh or cooked, folded into jams and curries, or sliced green into a Vietnamese salad, and the tree carries deep ethnobotanical weight across the native range, valued for food, folklore, and traditional medicine alike.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlant the elephant-ear fig where the roots can stretch and where water is not a stranger, in fertile, moisture-retentive soil with shelter from wind and hard frost. Give a warm, protected corner, a shaded wall or a wind-still glen, and the fig repays the kindness with almost prehistoric grandeur, the boldest foliage a Southern garden can hold short of a banana. Root-hardy to about zone 8 with a deep winter mulch, and a superb container subject that can be wheeled under cover farther north.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057870278771,"sku":"FICU-ROXB-01G","price":48.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/E15C645A-9997-4D89-A163-EEB1756C1647.jpg?v=1751288759"},{"product_id":"fortunella-crassifolia-meiwa","title":"Meiwa Kumquat","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Meiwa kumquat is the sweet one, the kumquat you can pop whole into your mouth and eat skin and all. A small, tidy, evergreen citrus, Fortunella crassifolia carries round, bright orange fruit a little over an inch across, and where most kumquats offer a sweet rind wrapped around sharply sour pulp, the Meiwa softens the contrast: the peel is thick and honey-sweet, the flesh only mildly tart, so the whole fruit eats like candy off the branch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKumquats belong to the rue and citrus family, Rutaceae, and hail from southern China, where they have been grown for centuries; the Meiwa is a naturally occurring hybrid of the round and oval kumquats, long cultivated in the Zhejiang province of China and in Japan, where the fruit is prized above all others for eating fresh. In spring, and often again through the warm season, the glossy little tree covers itself in small white flowers of intense, sweet citrus fragrance, a pleasure in their own right before the fruit ever sets.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs citrus go, kumquats are the hardiest and most forgiving, and the Meiwa is no exception, taking cold into the low twenties that would ruin an orange and thriving in a large pot as readily as in the ground. The compact, eight-to-twelve-foot habit, dense, rounded, and evergreen, makes the plant as ornamental as it is productive, and the fruit holds for weeks on the branch, glowing orange against the dark leaves through winter. Woodlanders' stock has shown strong growth here in Aiken, South Carolina.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrow the Meiwa kumquat in full sun and well-drained soil, in the ground where winters are mild or in a container that can shelter from hard frost farther north, and site the tree where the winter fruit and the fragrant spring flowers can be enjoyed close at hand, by a door, a patio, or a sunny wall. Few plants are so generous: evergreen structure, sweet perfume, and a long crop of the one citrus you can eat whole, straight from the branch.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057871556723,"sku":"KUMQ-MEIW-FORT-CRAS-01G","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Kumquat_Meiwa_Woodlanders_1.jpg?v=1731864795"},{"product_id":"fragaria-virginiana","title":"Fragaria virginiana","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the wild strawberry of eastern North America, Fragaria virginiana, the modest little groundcover that carpets sunny woodland edges, old fields, and roadside banks across the continent. Trifoliate, serrated leaves rise in low tufts, and slender runners reach out to root new plantlets at their tips, so that a single crown becomes a colony in a season or two.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn late spring, white five-petaled flowers open just above the leaves, followed by small red berries that country children and grown folk alike once gathered by the handful. The fruit is a fraction the size of a supermarket strawberry and many times the flavor, intensely sweet and aromatic, ripening in early summer and vanishing fast to birds, box turtles, and anyone lucky enough to be passing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plant carries real history. The Virginia strawberry crossed with a large-fruited Chilean species in eighteenth-century France to parent the modern garden strawberry, so every berry in the grocery aisle owes half the blood to this little native. Long before that, the fruit was food and medicine to Native peoples: in Iroquois myth the first strawberries sprang from the heart of Earth Woman, and the berry keeps a place of honor in the seasonal calendars of many Eastern nations.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, wild strawberry makes a fast, edible groundcover for a sunny bank, a path edge, the front of a border, or the brighter reaches of a woodland garden, feeding pollinators in spring and wildlife in summer. Give sun to part shade and well-drained soil, keep the plants free of smothering competition, and let the runners knit into a green, fruiting carpet. Not the plant for a heavy crop, but unmatched for flavor and for the simple pleasure of a berry eaten warm off the ground.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057872375923,"sku":"FRAG-VIRG-01Q","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Fragariavirginiana2.jpg?v=1724028401"},{"product_id":"laurus-nobilis","title":"Laurus nobilis","description":"\u003cp\u003eNo plant carries a heavier freight of story than Laurus nobilis, the bay laurel of the Mediterranean and the original laurel of the victor's crown. The genus name is simply the classical Latin for the tree, and the epithet nobilis means noble or renowned, a fair description of a plant whose leaves once crowned poets, athletes, and returning generals. The whole vocabulary of achievement still leans on this tree: a baccalaureate, a poet laureate, and the warning not to rest on one's laurels all trace back to the wreath of bay. In Greek myth the laurel was born of unrequited love, when the nymph Daphne, fleeing Apollo, was changed into a laurel tree by her father the river god; ever after the god wore the leaves in her memory, and the tree became sacred to him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBay laurel belongs to the laurel family, Lauraceae, in company with cinnamon, sassafras, and the avocado, and shares with those relatives a warm, aromatic resin held in every part. Left unpruned the plant becomes a dense evergreen tree of fine constitution, clothed year-round in dark, glossy, lance-shaped leaves. The species is dioecious, carrying male and female flowers on separate plants; the blooms are small and pale yellow-green, modest against the foliage, and on a female tree near a male they give way to shining black berries, each holding a single seed. Every leaf is rich in aromatic oils, which is the whole point of the tree in the kitchen.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThose oils have flavored food since antiquity, and a bay leaf still deepens the stews, stocks, and sauces of cooks who inherited the habit from Greek and Roman kitchens. Because this is a plant destined for the pot, how the tree is grown matters. Here at Woodlanders the bay laurel is raised without glyphosate, synthetic herbicides, or any practice that would compromise the safety or edibility of a culinary plant. What you receive is a tree raised with intention, safe for the kitchen, safe for the pollinators that visit the flowers, and safe for the ground the tree grows in.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden the bay laurel is as much sculpture as seasoning. The plant accepts shearing with unusual grace and has been clipped into standards, cones, and formal topiary since Renaissance gardeners first set a matched pair in pots beside a doorway. Grown in the ground in mild zones the tree holds a tidy line and greets winter in unbroken green; where the cold bites harder, the bay makes a superb container plant that can summer outdoors and shelter indoors through frost. Bay recalls the kitchen plots of old Southern gardens and the herb borders tucked behind cottages, tended by hands that understood both sustenance and beauty, and the plant deserves a central spot once more, for flavor and for form alike.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive the bay laurel full sun to light shade and a well-drained, neutral soil, and the tree asks for little beyond an occasional trim to shape. Patience is the only real requirement, since bay grows at a measured pace, but the reward is a living larder and a piece of evergreen architecture that can outlast the gardener. Additional photos courtesy of Cal Poly.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057909600371,"sku":"LAUR-NOBI-01G","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/laurus-nobilis-treeCalPolyWoodlanders1.jpg?v=1751029267"},{"product_id":"myrica-rubra","title":"Myrica rubra","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMyrica rubra\u003c\/em\u003e, the Chinese bayberry or yangmei, is a fruiting evergreen tree from the misty mountains of East Asia, revered for centuries across China and Japan for tangy-sweet berries and an elegant, shapely form. Imagine cherries and cranberries with a botanical lovechild that had the moodiness of a plum and the antioxidant punch of a superfruit, and something close to yangmei would be the result. The current stock is female, tissue-cultured clones of a named selection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe selection offered is 'Wuzi', either a newly chosen form from the famed Dongkui-growing region or a hybrid of Dongkui and Biqi. The name Wuzi translates as dark purple, a nod to the richly pigmented fruit, which runs darker and tastier than Dongkui if a touch smaller, and in the native region ripens about five days earlier, an early-season treat prized for both flavor and beauty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYangmei has always held a special place at Woodlanders. A beautiful mature specimen has grown in Aiken for years, quietly admired for evergreen grace and seasonal magic, but more than two decades have passed since the nursery could last offer this elusive gem to customers. Thanks to the meticulous work of a new partner, the Plant Propagator behind yangmei.us and a leading voice for yangmei cultivation in the United States, Woodlanders is proud to reintroduce this rare species to American gardens.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe reward is a shapely evergreen of shimmering, softly lanceolate leaves and, on a pollinated female, clusters of bumpy, jewel-like fruit in deep crimson to purple-black, sweet-tart and faintly resinous, rich in the anthocyanins that make yangmei a celebrated functional food in East Asia. A word for the determined gardener: yangmei is not for the faint of heart, slow to establish and sensitive to transplant, yet remarkably resilient once settled, and needing a male plant nearby for the females to fruit. Those who commit are rewarded with a plant that bridges the ornamental and the edible. \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/blogs\/the-node\/myrica-rubra-yangmei-the-fruit-that-won-t-wait\"\u003eRead this plant's full story here.\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"1 Gallon","offer_id":44014729724019,"sku":"MYRI-RUBR-01G","price":89.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"2 Gallon","offer_id":44014729756787,"sku":"MYRI-RUBR-03G","price":115.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/MyricarubraWoodlanders1.jpg?v=1753824919"},{"product_id":"passiflora-incarnata","title":"Passiflora incarnata","description":"\u003cp\u003eFew native plants look as improbable as the maypop. \u003cem\u003ePassiflora incarnata\u003c\/em\u003e, the wild passionflower of the American Southeast, opens intricate three-inch flowers of pale lavender and white, each ringed with a fringed corona of wavy filaments above a central column of stamens and styles. Spanish missionaries read the whole Passion of Christ into that structure, the corona for the crown of thorns, the five anthers for the wounds, the three styles for the nails, and gave the genus its devotional name. Common along field edges and roadsides from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas, the vine climbs by curling tendrils or sprawls across open ground.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe name maypop comes from the fruit, a lime-sized, egg-shaped berry that turns from green to leathery yellow and pops underfoot with a soft report, or, some say, from the shoots that may pop up unexpectedly in May. Inside, a fragrant, gelatinous pulp surrounds the seeds, sweet-tart and reminiscent of guava, long gathered from the wild for eating out of hand, for jellies, and for cool summer drinks. Songbirds and small mammals take the fallen fruit as readily as people do.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLong valued for more than the fruit, the maypop was brewed by Cherokee and other Southeastern peoples into calming teas, and later became one of the best-known nervine herbs of American and European practice, prized as a gentle remedy for restlessness and sleeplessness. In the garden the vine earns a place ecologically as well: the leaves are a host for the caterpillars of the Gulf fritillary and other passion-vine butterflies, and the nectar draws bees, butterflies, and the occasional hummingbird all summer long.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrow the maypop on a fence, a trellis, a mailbox, or an arbor in full sun and sandy, well-drained soil, and give the roots room, since a settled plant spreads by runners into a generous, sometimes wandering colony. From about zone 7 the top dies back each winter and the vine returns from the root with vigor in late spring, so treat the plant as a fast, flowering perennial where frost is sharp, and site the maypop where the summer-long parade of flowers can be watched at close range.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057934766195,"sku":"PASS-INCA-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1266.jpg?v=1720139971"},{"product_id":"prunus-angustifolia","title":"Prunus angustifolia","description":"\u003cp\u003eA native plum with a longer human history than any other fruit in North America. \u003cem\u003ePrunus angustifolia\u003c\/em\u003e, the Chickasaw plum, also called Cherokee plum, sand plum, sandhill plum, or Florida sand plum depending on the part of the range you are standing in, was actively cultivated by Indigenous peoples across the southeastern and central United States long before European contact. The Chickasaw, Cherokee, and several other nations carried the species in their orchards and food gardens, dried the fruit for winter storage, and almost certainly moved the plant eastward through pre-Columbian trade networks from what botanists now believe to be the species' true origin further west. The species was so deeply associated with Indigenous cultivation by the time European naturalists arrived that the binomial \u003cem\u003eangustifolia\u003c\/em\u003e, narrow leaf, eventually displaced earlier names like \u003cem\u003eP. chicasa\u003c\/em\u003e in formal taxonomy, though the common names kept the tribal attribution. Kansas made the plant its official state fruit in 2022. Few American native fruits carry their human history this visibly.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe plant itself is one of the great early-spring trees of the southeastern landscape. From late February through April, well before most other woody plants have leafed out, bare branches erupt into clouds of small white five-petaled flowers, fragrant and swarmed by every emerging pollinator within range. This is one of the most important early nectar sources in the entire eastern flora: the flowers open at the precise moment when overwintering native bees, queen bumble bees, mason bees, and early butterflies emerge from dormancy and need food before almost anything else is blooming. Without early-spring plums and serviceberries, the native bee community has nowhere to go in the gap between the last winter aconites and the first warm-season flowers. Doug Tallamy's research on native-plant ecological value places the genus \u003cem\u003ePrunus\u003c\/em\u003e in the top tier of woody natives nationwide, and \u003cem\u003eP. angustifolia\u003c\/em\u003e hosts more than 380 species of butterfly and moth caterpillars, from the coral hairstreak and eastern tiger swallowtail to the cecropia, polyphemus, imperial, and promethea silkmoths, a list that reads like a roll call of the eastern lepidoptera.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe fruit follows in midsummer. Half-inch drupes ripen from yellow to red, cherry-like in color and slightly tart in the flesh, the kind of small wild fruit that needs cooking to come into its own. Generations of southerners have made Chickasaw plum jelly, preserves, pies, and wine; the fruit dries well, cooks beautifully, and carries a flavor that improved-orchard plums have largely lost to commercial breeding. Birds, foxes, raccoons, and box turtles work the ripening fruit hard, which is why most wild stands lose their crop within days of full ripeness, so pick early or share generously.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe plants offered here are seedlings from a particular late-flowering, late-fruiting clone growing in Aiken County, South Carolina. Late timing is meaningful: it shifts the bloom past the worst frost windows, extends the bloom and fruiting periods relative to the species' typical schedule, and gives gardeners a slightly different window of wildlife support and harvest. The parent clone has been observed at Woodlanders for years, and the seedlings carry forward the genetic tendency toward later phenology while introducing the variability needed for good cross-pollination and resilience.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057946955891,"sku":"PRUN-ANGU-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1186.jpg?v=1720140280"},{"product_id":"prunus-mume","title":"Prunus mume","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePrunus mume\u003c\/em\u003e, the Japanese flowering apricot, is one of the most beloved of all winter-flowering trees, opening almond-scented blossoms in the depths of winter, from soft white to deep pink, on bare branches while the rest of the garden sleeps. In China and Japan the mei or ume has been celebrated in poetry and painting for well over a thousand years as a symbol of resilience and the turning of the year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAcross the southern United States the flowers open in mid to late winter, sometimes as early as January, filling the cold air with a powerful sweet, honey-almond fragrance that carries far on a still day. Bees and the earliest pollinators find the blooms gratefully, at a moment when almost nothing else is open.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese seedlings come from the celebrated 'Peggy Clarke' and tend toward single flowers. Beyond the bloom, \u003cem\u003ePrunus mume\u003c\/em\u003e is a productive fruit tree: small, round, apricot-like fruits ripen yellow-green with a red blush in late spring and summer, tart and acidic, and made into preserves, pickles, and the famous Japanese umeboshi and ume wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe smoked, dried fruit is also wu mei, one of the oldest herbs of traditional Chinese medicine, recorded nearly two thousand years ago. Grow the tree as a small specimen for a courtyard, a lawn, or a mixed border, in full sun to part shade and fertile, well-drained soil, and prune right after flowering, since bloom comes on the previous year's wood. Site where the winter fragrance can be met near a path or a door.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057947381875,"sku":"PRUN-MUME-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1185.jpg?v=1720140301"},{"product_id":"pseudocydonia-sinensis","title":"Pseudocydonia sinensis","description":"\u003cp\u003eChinese quince is one of those trees that seems to offer something beautiful at every turn. Soft pink flowers arrive in spring, dark green leaves carry the tree through summer, and fall brings warm color along with large, fragrant fruit. Even in winter the peeling bark gives a quiet kind of beauty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePseudocydonia sinensis\u003c\/em\u003e settles into the garden with real presence. The tree is lovely in flower, of course, but the special quality is the way the interest continues long after spring has passed. The flowers appear in soft pink along the older wood, subtle and elegant rather than flashy. As the season moves on, the crown fills with rich green leaves that read as substantial and handsome through the heat of summer. Then, in autumn, the foliage turns shades of yellow, amber, and red, and the branches begin to carry large golden fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the most beautiful features is the bark. As the tree matures, the trunk and branches peel in patches of gray, green, tan, and brown, a wonderfully textured surface that stands out all the more once the leaves have dropped. In winter, when the garden is quieter, that mosaic bark gives the tree a lasting elegance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is something a little old-fashioned about Chinese quince in the best possible way. The fruit is intensely aromatic and ornamental, and while too hard to eat fresh, has long been appreciated for preserves, jellies, and fragrant quince tea. Grow the tree as a specimen in an open space, near a walkway, or anywhere the bark, fruit, and branching can be met up close, and over time it becomes the kind of plant people stop to ask about.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057947644019,"sku":"PSEU-SINE-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Pseudocydonia_sinens_vItCO8BhofWY.jpg?v=1773273486"},{"product_id":"punica-granatum-fruiting-from-sc","title":"Punica granatum (fruiting, from SC)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the pomegranate grown the old way, for the fruit. \u003cem\u003ePunica granatum\u003c\/em\u003e is a deciduous Middle Eastern shrub of narrow, glossy leaves and vivid orange-red flowers, followed by the large, leathery-skinned, garnet-seeded fruits for which the plant has been cultivated since antiquity. Woodlanders raised this particular selection from seed of a good fruiting specimen in upstate South Carolina, and the plant may well represent 'Wonderful', the widely grown commercial variety, proven here as a dependable cropper in the southern garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFew plants carry a longer human record. The pomegranate was among the first fruits brought into cultivation, spreading from Persia and the Levant across the ancient world, moving with caravans, armies, and traders until the shrub grew from Spain to India. Spanish missionaries carried the fruit to the Americas, and in the gardens of the old South the pomegranate became a dooryard fixture, tucked near back steps where the tart juice went into jelly and syrup. This South Carolina seedling continues that long southern thread.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe pomegranate has always meant more than the sum of the seeds. The many-chambered fruit is an ancient emblem of fertility and abundance, woven through Greek myth in the story of Persephone, through Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, and through the astringent rind and bark that old apothecaries kept for the gut and for expelling parasites. Even the name is a history lesson: \u003cem\u003egranatum\u003c\/em\u003e, grainy or full of seeds, gave English the word grenade, while \u003cem\u003ePunica\u003c\/em\u003e points back to Carthage and the Punic peoples through whom Rome first knew the fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, give the pomegranate a hot, sunny, well-drained spot and room for a multi-stemmed shrub of ten to twelve feet, or limb the plant up into a small tree. Full sun and a long, warm season bring the heaviest crop, and steady water during fruit set keeps the ripening globes from splitting. Site the shrub in an edible landscape, a Mediterranean-style planting, or a sunny border where the orange-red flowers feed pollinators and the fall fruit can be gathered, and pair with figs, rosemary, and other sun-loving companions. Drought-tolerant once established, and long-lived where winters stay mild.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057949544563,"sku":"PUNI-GRAN-FRUI-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1589.jpg?v=1720140363"},{"product_id":"rubus-irenaeus","title":"Rubus irenaeus","description":"\u003cp\u003eRubus 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe species hails from the mountains of central and western China and reached Western gardens around 1900, one of the many treasures the great collector Ernest Henry Wilson sent home to the Veitch nursery. Rubus is the ancient Latin name for the brambles, a vast and famously enthusiastic genus of blackberries and raspberries; irenaeus, from the Greek for peaceful, sets this quiet, well-mannered groundcover gently apart from the running, scrambling habits of the tribe. In leaf the plant reads more like a wild ginger or a bergenia than any raspberry.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders obtained this rarity many years ago from a garden in Sumter, South Carolina, where the plant was quietly in cultivation, and have not met with it anywhere else in the South since. In early summer, upright stems rise above the leafy mat to carry small, white, five-petaled flowers, and by late summer these give way to little orange-red raspberries, edible if modest, and much appreciated by bees, butterflies, and birds. The fruit is a bonus rather than a crop, borne on a plant grown above all for the foliage.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, few evergreens will carpet full, dry shade with leaves this large and handsome, though the plant is just as content in sun given steady moisture. Run Rubus irenaeus beneath shrubs and high canopy, down a shaded bank, or along a woodland path where the bold, bronze-flushed leaves can be read at close range, and pair with ferns, hellebores, and other shade companions of finer texture. A rare, quietly aristocratic groundcover for the difficult places where ordinary carpets give up.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057981427827,"sku":"RUBU-IREN-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1202.jpg?v=1720140959"},{"product_id":"tulbaghia-violacea","title":"Tulbaghia violacea","description":"\u003cp\u003eTulbaghia violacea, the plant gardeners know as society garlic, is a clump-forming perennial from the summer-dry grasslands of southern Africa, ranging from the Little Karoo through the Eastern Cape to KwaZulu-Natal. The genus honors Ryk Tulbagh, the eighteenth-century Dutch governor of the Cape of Good Hope, while the species name violacea simply means violet, for the color of the flowers. The common name is a small joke: the leaves carry a clear garlic scent, but a gentler, more sociable one than true garlic, said to be polite enough for company.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom a mat of fleshy rhizomes rise slender, blue-green, strap-like leaves that release that unmistakable garlic breath when bruised or brushed. In South Africa the Zulu people have long eaten the leaves and flowers as a leaf vegetable and a seasoning, chopped over meat and potatoes much as chives or garlic greens would be, and the plant remains a fixture of herb gardens for both the kitchen and the medicine chest. Both the leaves and the starry flowers are edible, lending a mild garlic note and a spark of color to salads and summer plates.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom late spring through the heat of summer and into autumn, wiry stems lift airy umbels of small, tubular, lavender-purple flowers a foot or two above the foliage, swaying at the least breeze and drawing bees and butterflies. Society garlic makes an easy, long-blooming edging along a path or drive, a soft filler at the front of a sunny border, or a tidy sweep in a gravel or Mediterranean-style planting, and the same garlic compounds that flavor the kitchen also keep deer, rabbits, and many pests at a respectful distance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive the plant full sun and sharp, well-drained soil, and society garlic asks for very little, thriving on heat and drought once settled and colonizing gently into a generous clump over the years. Across the warm South the foliage stays evergreen, while at the cold edge of the range a hard freeze cuts the leaves back to rhizomes that return in spring, so a winter mulch or a lifted clump carries the plant through. For sheer, unfussy endurance, few flowering perennials give back so long a season for so little asked.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058006364275,"sku":"TULB-VIOL-01G","price":12.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/TulbaghiaviolaceaWoodlanders1.jpg?v=1731728380"},{"product_id":"vaccinium-sempervirens","title":"Vaccinium sempervirens","description":"\u003cp\u003eVaccinium 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plant came to botanical attention in 1980, when the botanists D. A. Rayner and J. Henderson described it as a distinct species and gave it the name that honors the first of them, Rayner's blueberry. Later taxonomists, W. B. Kirkman and J. Ballington among them, judged the plant a close cousin of the creeping blueberry rather than a species apart, and reduced it to Vaccinium crassifolium subspecies sempervirens, a reflection of both the kinship and the geographic isolation that set the plant on its own path.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere the creeping blueberry runs flat along the ground, Rayner's blueberry stands more erect and arching, and carries noticeably larger, glossier, evergreen leaves. In the garden the plant takes the form of a graceful low shrub, trailing or upright to about two feet, hung in spring with the small white bells of the blueberries and, later, with small dark fruit. The evergreen foliage holds year-round interest that few native blueberries can match.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive Rayner's blueberry the moist, acid, sandy, well-drained ground of the wild home, where water moves through but never stands, in full sun to part shade. Use the plant in a native or Piedmont-restoration planting, a collector's bed of southeastern rarities, or a naturalistic border where a storied evergreen groundcover is wanted. For the gardener drawn to the poetry of place, few plants carry so much history in so quiet a form, and every plant grown helps hold a vanishing South Carolina endemic in cultivation. Photos courtesy of Keith Bradley and Michael Kunz.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058007085171,"sku":"VACC-SEMP-01G","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/VacciniumsempervirensKeithBradleyWoodlanders1_2862bf31-204c-4c98-a60d-b2b4dd29a7dc.jpg?v=1751556492"},{"product_id":"vaccinium-darrowi-sebring","title":"Vaccinium darrowii 'Sebring'","description":"\u003cp\u003eDarrow'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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChosen for ornamental quality as much as fruit, 'Sebring' makes an attractive, compact garden subject, dense and neat, carrying the small, bell-like flowers and small edible berries typical of the blueberries. The fine green foliage stays evergreen through the year, a quiet, well-behaved presence at the front of a bed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the wild, Darrow's blueberry grows in the pinelands of the Deep South on sandy, acid soils that drain freely or at least never flood, and 'Sebring' keeps that preference. Give the plant a sunny spot and sharp drainage, and the shrub settles in with little fuss.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUse 'Sebring' in a native plant garden, an edible landscape, or a mixed shrub border, where the fine texture reads against bolder leaves, and grow the shrub in full sun for the best, densest effect. Pair with other acid-loving natives on lean, sandy ground, and enjoy an evergreen blueberry grown as much for foliage as for the modest crop.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058007314547,"sku":"VACC-DARR-SEBR-01G","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Vaccinium_Sebring_2.jpg?v=1746649070"},{"product_id":"vaccinium-myrsinites","title":"Vaccinium myrsinites","description":"\u003cp\u003eShiny 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn early spring, clusters of small, waxy, white to pink, bell-shaped flowers stud the low mounds, mildly fragrant and busy with bees, and give way to small, glossy, dark blue berries. The fruit is modest in size but flavorful, sweet enough for fresh eating, jams, and baked goods, and as welcome to birds and other wildlife as to the gardener.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative across the Coastal Plain from the Carolinas through Florida and west along the Gulf, shiny blueberry grows in pine flatwoods and sandy scrub on lean, acid ground, an easy, fire-adapted survivor of hot, sandy country. That toughness makes the plant a natural for a naturalistic garden, a native or pollinator planting, or a restoration bed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrow shiny blueberry in well-drained, sandy, acid soil in full sun or part shade, and use the low, dense mounds as a native groundcover, an edging, or a fine-textured filler that gives structure, spring bloom, and edible fruit at once. Pair with wiregrass, other pineland natives, and taller blueberries for a layered, wildlife-friendly planting. Photo courtesy of Bob Peterson.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058007380083,"sku":"VACC-MYRS-01G","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/VacciniummyrisnitesBobPeterson.png?v=1725391538"},{"product_id":"vaccinium-elliottii","title":"Vaccinium elliottii","description":"\u003cp\u003eElliott'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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe great garden gift is the autumn. Small, fine-textured leaves that read glossy green through summer turn brilliant scarlet in fall and hang late into winter, giving Elliott's blueberry the strongest fall color of the group and a real place in a border for the show alone.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEarly spring brings clouds of small, white to pale-pink, bell-shaped flowers, mildly fragrant and busy with the first bees, followed by small, sweet, dark blue to black berries. The fruit is good fresh or cooked and feeds birds and other wildlife, and while the crop is modest beside a cultivated blueberry, the flavor is fine and the ecological value real.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the wild, Elliott's blueberry grows across the Southeast in mixed hardwood forests, swampy woodlands, floodplains, and longleaf pine ridges, from southeastern Virginia to Florida and west to Texas. Give the plant full to partial sun and acid, well-drained soil, and use the shrub at a woodland edge, in a native planting, or in a mixed border where the spring bloom, sweet fruit, and scarlet fall color each take a turn. Rarely offered in the trade, and worth seeking out.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058007445619,"sku":"VACC-ELLI-01G","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1068.jpg?v=1720141574"},{"product_id":"vaccinium-crassifolium-wells-delight","title":"Vaccinium crassifolium 'Well's Delight'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe creeping blueberry is the ground-hugging cousin of the fruiting kinds, a low, evergreen, native groundcover of the Carolina coastal plain that trades height for reach. 'Well's Delight' is a North Carolina State University selection from the southeastern corner of that state, named for the late Dr. B.W. Wells, the pioneering North Carolina ecologist, and set apart by small, shiny leaves even finer than the usual for the species. The botanical name crassifolium means thick-leaved, for the firm little evergreen leaves that line the trailing stems.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRather than a fruit crop, this is a plant grown for cover and texture: a dense, glossy, dark green mat that turns bronze and burgundy through winter cold. Small, white to pink, bell-shaped flowers stud the mat in spring, feeding early bees, and are followed by small dark blue berries that the birds take, edible enough for a passing nibble though never the harvest of a true blueberry bush.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the wild, creeping blueberry runs along the moist, sandy, acid ground of the Carolina coastal plain, where the water table sits high or a slow seepage keeps the soil damp, though the roots never sit in flood. That preference makes the plant a natural evergreen groundcover for a sandy bank, the front of an acid border, a pond-edge slope, or a native and pollinator planting, knitting slowly into a fine, weed-smothering carpet.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive 'Well's Delight' full sun to light shade and the moist, sandy, acid soil the plant favors, and the mat fills in steadily with almost no care. Pair the groundcover with blueberries, pieris, native azaleas, and other acid-loving companions, and let a drift carry the ground where turf or a coarser cover would look heavy. A quiet, refined native that does a great deal of work for a plant so close to the soil.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058007576691,"sku":"VACC-CRAS-WELL-DELI-01G","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-543.jpg?v=1720141582"},{"product_id":"vaccinium-darrowi-john-blue","title":"Vaccinium darrowii 'John Blue'","description":"\u003cp\u003eDarrow'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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSmall, fine, and glaucous blue-green, the evergreen foliage gives 'John Blue' a cool, silvered presence that few blueberries can match, held on a naturally dense, tidy frame. The color reads beautifully against darker greens and burgundy foliage, so the plant works as an ornamental first, in a native plant garden, an edible landscape, or a mixed shrub border, and as a fruiting blueberry second.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn spring the branches carry the small, white, bell-shaped flowers typical of the blueberries, mildly fragrant and busy with native bees, followed by small dark blue berries that are edible and as welcome to birds as to gardeners. The crop is modest beside a rabbiteye, but the pollinator and wildlife value is real, and the fruit is a pleasant bonus on a plant grown chiefly for the foliage.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to the hot, sandy pinelands of the Deep South, 'John Blue' wants full sun and well-drained, sandy, acid soil, and dislikes any spot that stands wet. Give the plant a bright, sharply drained bed, avoid low ground that holds water, and the reward is year-round blue-green structure, spring bloom for the bees, and a touch of Southern heritage in a compact, resilient shrub.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058007707763,"sku":"VACC-DARR-JOHN-BLUE-01G","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/VacciniumJohnBlue_2.jpg?v=1746648968"},{"product_id":"vaccinium-darrowii-rosas-blush","title":"Vaccinium darrowii 'Rosa's Blush'","description":"\u003cp\u003eDarrow'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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Rosa's Blush' is a selection made by the Woodlanders' friend Steve Riefler, a noted Florida plant hunter and breeder who has found and introduced a number of now-popular native species and selections. Steve named this one for the late Rosa Gonzales, a nursery colleague, and the plant has become a favorite in its own right for the warmth the pink new growth brings to an evergreen frame.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough the year the small, shiny leaves hold blue-green and evergreen, blushing pink with each new flush and in cooler weather. Small, bell-shaped, white to pale-pink flowers open in spring for the bees, followed by small but genuinely good blueberries, sweet with a little tartness and welcome to birds as well as gardeners.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrow 'Rosa's Blush' as an ornamental first, in a native plant garden, an edible landscape, or a mixed shrub border, where the pink-flushed evergreen foliage cools darker greens. Plant in sandy, acid, well-drained soil in a sunny or lightly shaded spot, and the shrub asks for little once settled. Photos courtesy of Mike Gercens III and NetPlant.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058007838835,"sku":"VACC-DARR-ROSA-BLUS-01G","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/ScreenShot2024-08-01at10.12.23PM.png?v=1722564988"},{"product_id":"vaccinium-stamineum","title":"Vaccinium stamineum","description":"\u003cp\u003eDeerberry 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLess familiar than the highbush and rabbiteye kinds, deerberry earns a place for quiet beauty and toughness, thriving where the soil runs dry, lean, and acid and few other shrubs will linger. The narrow, elliptical leaves range from fresh spring green to a striking glaucous blue-green that stands out like old silver, and in early summer the little bells dangle from slender stalks. The berries that follow are relatively large for a blueberry, ripening from green through pink to dusky purple or brown, edible if somewhat astringent, and valuable above all to birds, deer, and small mammals.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plants offered here are cutting-grown from a particularly handsome colony found in the sandhills of South Carolina, chosen for glaucous foliage, an elegant structure, and the way the shrub forms naturalistic colonies over time. That silvered leaf is the reason to grow this form, a cool foil among the greens of a native planting.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive deerberry well-drained, sandy, acid soil in full sun to part shade, and use the shrub for naturalizing, understory restoration, sandhill and pine-ecosystem gardens, and native or wildlife plantings where subtlety is welcome. Pair with other dry-ground natives, allow room for the loose colony to spread, and let the glaucous foliage and generous wildlife value carry the season. Photos courtesy of Eric Hunt and Susan Strine.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058007904371,"sku":"VACC-STAM-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Vaccineum_stamineum_Ted_Bodner_Southern_Weed_Science_SocietyBugwoodcccby30.jpg?v=1749148158"},{"product_id":"vaccinium-tenellum","title":"Vaccinium tenellum","description":"\u003cp\u003eSmall 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA tidy, low, deciduous shrub rarely more than knee to waist high, small black blueberry carries small, glossy green leaves that turn red to deep purple in fall, and in mid to late spring hangs clusters of small, bell-shaped, white to light-pink flowers that draw bees and other pollinators. The plant makes an easy, well-behaved presence at the front of a native bed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe berries that follow are small, round, and smooth, darker and daintier than a commercial blueberry but sweet with a pleasant tang, good eaten fresh or cooked into jams, jellies, and pies. Across the South the fruit has been gathered from the wild for generations, and the ripe berries feed birds and small mammals as readily as people.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrow small black blueberry in sandy, acid, well-drained soil in full sun to part shade, with a little afternoon shade welcome where summers are fierce. Use the low shrub in a native or pollinator planting, an edible landscape, or a naturalized sandy bed, and pair with other pineland natives. Photo courtesy of R.W. Smith.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058007969907,"sku":"VACC-TENE-01G","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Vacciniumtenellum-RWSmith.jpg?v=1725920127"},{"product_id":"x-citrofortunella-mitis-calamondin","title":"x Citrofortunella mitis 'Calamondin'","description":"\u003cp\u003eA charming citrus hybrid for containers, winter patios, and kitchen harvests. Known as the calamondin orange, x Citrofortunella mitis 'Calamondin' is a compact, cold-tolerant citrus treasured for abundant fragrant blossoms, ornamental good looks, and tart, edible fruit. A natural cross between the mandarin orange, Citrus reticulata, and the kumquat, Fortunella, calamondin is equally at home on a patio or in a bright kitchen window, offering both beauty and bounty the year round.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis small evergreen tree or shrub carries glossy, deep green leaves, fragrant white flowers, and heavy crops of small, round orange fruit like miniature tangerines. Too tart to eat out of hand, the fruit is prized in the kitchen for an intense citrus flavor, perfect for marmalades, marinades, drinks, and preserves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA favorite for container gardening, calamondin stays manageable at four to six feet when potted and pruned, and reaches ten to twelve feet in the ground in frost-free gardens. The plant thrives in full sun and well-drained soil, performs best where winters are mild, and takes well to overwintering indoors in colder regions. With the habit of blooming and fruiting at the same time, calamondin gives a continuous cycle of interest and a bright citrus fragrance indoors or out.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy federal citrus quarantine, we cannot ship citrus to Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, or Texas.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058013343859,"sku":"CITR-MITI-CALA-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-2150.jpg?v=1720141809"},{"product_id":"x-citrofortunella-thomasville","title":"Thomasville Citrangequat","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Thomasville citrangequat is more than a fruit tree, a living piece of Southern horticultural history. First fruited in Thomasville, Georgia, this remarkable hybrid was raised in 1909 by the legendary USDA citrus breeder Walter T. Swingle and formally named in 1923. The tree stands as a pioneering achievement in citrus breeding: a three-way cross combining the cold-hardy Willits citrange, itself a cross of sweet orange and trifoliate orange, with the Nagami kumquat, Fortunella margarita.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrown on its own trifoliate roots, the Thomasville grows upright and vigorous, with thorny branches and distinctive three-part trifoliate leaves. Fragrant white blossoms in spring give way to abundant, egg-shaped fruit, yellow to orange, that ripens from January into April. The fruit is tart and tangy picked young, mellowing to a pleasantly acidic, kumquat-like flavor when fully ripe, and though somewhat seedy, is prized for a distinctive taste that shines in preserves, marmalades, and citrus-forward cocktails.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat truly sets the Thomasville apart is exceptional cold hardiness. Tolerant down to about ten degrees Fahrenheit, this is one of the most cold-tolerant edible citrus a gardener can grow, well suited to USDA zones 8 to 10. Planted in the ground where winters are mild, or grown in a container and carried to shelter farther north, the tree brings both historic charm and real, practical resilience to the edible landscape.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive the Thomasville full sun to part shade and a well-drained, slightly acidic soil, and site the tree where the fragrant spring bloom and long winter fruit can be enjoyed, and where the thorny branches sit back from a busy path. Self-reliant and productive, a piece of Deep South citrus history that still earns a place in the garden a century on.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhotos courtesy of UGA Botanic Gardens and Tom McClendon of McClendon Citrus.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058013409395,"sku":"CITR-THOM-01G","price":48.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Thomasvillecitrus.jpg?v=1752849177"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/collections\/Woodlanders_Edibles_Collection_Banner.png?v=1722564365","url":"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/collections\/edibles.oembed?page=4","provider":"Woodlanders","version":"1.0","type":"link"}