Osmanthus x fortunei ‘San Jose'

Osmanthus x fortunei 'San Jose' is a large, upright member of Fortune's tea olive, the garden hybrid that crosses the false holly, Osmanthus heterophyllus, with the sweet olive, Osmanthus fragrans. Among the fortunei clones, 'San Jose' stands apart for thinner, more finely toothed leaves and a taller, more upright habit, a plant that reaches for height where others spread.

This is one of the bigger tea olives, building over time into a dense evergreen of twenty to thirty feet, which makes 'San Jose' a natural for a tall screen, a windbreak, or a fragrant boundary where a full-sized wall of green is wanted. Both parent species hail from the woodlands of Asia, and the hybrid carries their toughness, an easy, long-lived landscape evergreen for sunny or semi-shady sites with average soil and good drainage.

The reward comes in fall, when tiny, waxy white flowers open among the leaves and fill the air with the classic osmanthus perfume, that warm sweetness of ripe apricot and peach for which the genus has been loved for centuries across Asia. The blooms are easy to overlook by eye and impossible to miss by nose, and they draw the season's late pollinators.

Site 'San Jose' where the autumn scent can be caught in passing and the tall frame has room to rise: along a boundary, behind a border, or as a fragrant screen between garden and street. Give full sun to part shade and average, well-drained soil, with afternoon shade welcome in the fiercest heat, and pair with camellias, hollies, and other broadleaf evergreens. Upright, dense, and generally left alone by deer, the shrub gives privacy and perfume at once.