Dendropanax trifidus

Dendropanax trifidus is one of those quiet, aristocratic evergreens that rewards a second look and then a third. To the casual eye the plant reads as a glossy, tropical-looking small tree, something you would expect to sulk at the first frost; in truth this is a tough, warm-temperate native of the coastal forests of southern Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, hardy well into the Southeast and unbothered by heat, humidity, or a mild winter.

The genus name tells part of the story. Dendropanax joins the Greek for tree, dendron, to panax, the same root behind ginseng and the old idea of a cure-all, so the botanical name reads almost as tree ginseng. The kinship is real, because this is a member of the Araliaceae, the ivy and ginseng family, cousin to English ivy, to Fatsia, to Aralia, and to ginseng itself, and the rounded summer umbels of small yellow-green flowers, followed by clusters of black autumn drupes, echo that family resemblance exactly.

The Japanese common name is the poetry, though. Gardeners there call this tree kakuremino, the cloak of invisibility, after a magical straw cape from folklore that hid whoever wore it. The name was borrowed for the plant because the deeply cut, three-lobed juvenile leaves resemble that mythical mino, the woven rain cloak, and it also happens to describe how the tree behaves in a planting, slipping quietly into the green background until the light catches the lacquered leaves. The species name, trifidus, meaning split into three, records the same lobed juvenile foliage, which is only half the trick: as the tree matures the leaves gradually give up their lobes and settle into simple, entire ovals, so a single specimen in transition often carries both leaf forms at once, a botanical curiosity called heteroblasty.

Here in the United States the plant is still barely known. This particular tree grew in our own garden in Aiken, South Carolina for years, and Dendropanax trifidus was very possibly first offered to American gardeners by Woodlanders. Use the dense, upright form as a rare evergreen for shade: a woodland understory, a shaded courtyard, or a narrow green screen in a tight side yard, where the glossy foliage lends a tropical calm that belies real hardiness. Pair with fatsia, aucuba, ferns, and hellebores, give shade to semi-shade and moist, well-drained soil, and shelter the plant from harsh winter wind. In cold snaps the leaves flush burgundy and copper, then return to deep green with spring.