Osmanthus fragrans 'Conger Yellow'

For all the sweet osmanthus grown across the South, most carry the same tiny white flowers, so 'Conger Yellow' arrives as a quiet surprise: a clone bearing clusters of soft, butter-yellow blooms against notably large, glossy leaves. The flowers keep the family gift, that warm apricot-and-honey perfume that drifts on autumn air and, in mild climates, returns in scattered flushes through much of the year, strongest as evening cools.

The species itself, an evergreen from the woodlands of China, has been a Southern favorite for generations, and Michael Dirr, in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, wrote that the flowers appear over such a great time frame and are so fragrant that to not try the plant is to cheat one's garden. 'Conger Yellow' upholds the praise on a big, tree-like frame reaching fifteen to twenty feet. Woodlanders is glad to credit the flowering photographs to Juniper Level Botanic Garden and the JC Raulston Arboretum, two gardens that have done much to bring the better osmanthus selections into the trade.

In China the flowers of sweet osmanthus are gui hua, steeped with green and black tea into the fragrant osmanthus tea, simmered into syrups and jams, and folded into mooncakes and rice wine, while traditional Chinese medicine has long turned the dried flowers to warming, phlegm-clearing, and digestive uses. A yellow-flowered clone like 'Conger Yellow' carries the same scented, useful blossom, with a little extra color for the eye.

Site 'Conger Yellow' where the perfume will be caught in passing: beside a door, along a path, near a patio, or under a window opened to the autumn cool. The dense, upright evergreen also works as an informal hedge, a screen, or a fragrant anchor in a mixed border, and the large leaves give a bolder texture than the ordinary tea olive. Give full sun to part shade and moist, well-drained soil, with afternoon shade in the fiercest heat, and pair with camellias, hollies, and other broadleaf evergreens.