The Yuzuquat is a tri-generic hybrid, a curiosity even among unusual citrus. One parent is the yuzu, itself a cross of Citrus ichangensis and Citrus reticulata; the other is the 'Nagami' kumquat, Fortunella margarita. From that three-way pedigree comes an attractive evergreen citrus that bears sour, juicy, lemon-like fruits about the size of a chicken egg.
NuClem 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."
The 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.
American yellowwood is one of the loveliest and least common of our native trees, a broad, round-headed deciduous tree grown for three good seasons of interest. In late spring, usually May, long pendulous panicles of white, pea-like flowers hang from the branch tips, sweetly fragrant and wisteria-like, a spectacle in the years the tree chooses to flower heavily. Summer brings clean, bright-then-deep green compound foliage, and autumn a dependable, clear golden yellow that is among the best fall color of any hardwood. The smooth gray bark, beech-like, holds the winter garden.
Clematis armandii is the evergreen clematis, a bold, glossy-leaved vine that breaks nearly every rule of the genus. Where most clematis drop their leaves and climb daintily, this one holds large, leathery, dark green trifoliate leaves the year round and grows with real vigor, then smothers itself in fragrant white flowers at the very start of spring. Few vines open so much bloom so early, and fewer still carry evergreen foliage handsome enough to grow for the leaves alone.
Clematis crispa, the swamp leather flower, is a small and delicate native vine that trades the flat, showy face of a garden clematis for something quieter and stranger. The flowers hang solitary and nodding, little urns of thick, leathery blue-purple, paler within, their four recurved sepals frilled and crimped at the tips like curled ribbon. Slightly fragrant and endlessly charming, this is a clematis scaled for a small garden rather than a barn wall.
Clematis morefieldii, Morefield's leather flower, is one of the rarest of the native clematis, a delicate climbing vine known in the wild from only a small pocket of limestone country around Huntsville, Alabama, and just into Tennessee. Like the other leather flowers, this species trades broad, flat blooms for small, nodding, urn-shaped flowers, here a soft, downy pink, their sepal tips curling back at the rim. The stems and leaves carry a fine coat of whitish hairs, giving the whole plant a soft, silvered look.
Clerodendrum indicum, the Turk's turban, is a bold, tropical-looking perennial that stages two very different shows in a single season. First come tall, nearly unbranched stems, ringed with long narrow leaves and topped in summer by great airy sprays of long-tubed white flowers, shooting outward like a burst of fireworks, which earns the plant its other names, tube flower and skyrocket. Then, as the blooms fade, the real surprise arrives.
Summersweet, Clethra alnifolia, is one of the great fragrant natives of the eastern United States, a shrub of moist woods and pond edges whose white summer spikes carry a honey-and-clove perfume across the whole garden. Colonists called the plant Sweet Pepperbush, for the peppercorn-like seed heads that follow, and Summersweet, for the scent; the flowers even lather softly in water and once served as a field soap.
Summersweet, or sweet pepperbush, is one of the most useful of the native shrubs for moist, shaded ground, and 'Hummingbird' is the compact, free-flowering selection that made the species a garden staple. Like the straight Clethra alnifolia, this is a stoloniferous deciduous shrub that forms colonies in moist, acid soil, valued above all for the upright spikes of intensely fragrant white flowers that perfume the whole garden in the heat of summer, when little else is blooming.
The Japanese clethra is grown for bark as much as bloom. Clethra barbinervis is a tall, tree-like deciduous shrub or small tree from the mountains of Japan and Korea, carrying somewhat fragrant terminal racemes of white flowers in summer, in the same sweet-scented family as the native summersweets. But the real distinction is the bark: smooth and polished, gray to warm brown, and exfoliating in age to a handsome patchwork that makes this one of the finest small trees for the winter garden.
Most of the summersweets drop their leaves and sleep through winter; Clethra pringlei keeps them. This Mexican member of the clan is a broad-leaved evergreen, a large, slow-growing shrub or small tree from the mountain woodlands of northeastern Mexico, and one of the more surprising plants in the genus for a gardener who knows only the deciduous American kinds.
The summersweets are among the most fragrant of American shrubs, and the southern woolly summersweet, Clethra tomentosa, carries the whole tribe's gifts: colonies of upright stems in moist, acid ground, and terminal spikes of white flowers that pour a honey-and-clove perfume across the July garden. Country people knew the plant as Sweet Pepperbush, for the peppercorn seed heads, and the crushed flowers even raise a soft lather once used as a woodland soap.
Cliftonia monophylla 'Berry Pink' is a rare, pink-flowered selection of the Black Titi, a native evergreen shrub or small tree of the southeastern coastal plain that normally blooms in white. The species haunts the acid bogs, pond margins, and titi swamps from the Carolinas to the Gulf, where the early flowers make the buckwheat tree one of the first and most important nectar sources of the southern year, the source of the prized titi honey.
Clinopodium coccineum is a small, aromatic, semi-evergreen subshrub of the mint family, native to the deep, well-drained sands of the southeastern coastal plain, from Mississippi and Georgia down into Florida. The loose, open frame and small, spicy-scented leaves would earn a quiet place on their own, but the flowers are the event: showy scarlet tubes carried over a long summer season, held out like little trumpets that hummingbirds cannot resist.
'Amber Blush' is a soft-toned selection of the native scarlet calamint, Clinopodium coccineum, an aromatic, semi-evergreen subshrub of the mint family from the deep sands of the southeastern coastal plain. Where the wild species flowers in hot scarlet, this apricot clone brings a gentler, more complicated color to the same tough, hummingbird-loved plant.
Clinopodium coccineum 'Ohoopee Yellow' wears a contradictory name, since this is a clear, bright yellow-flowered form of a mint shrub that usually blooms in scarlet. The yellow form was originally shared with us by Ken Wurdak, who found the plant in Tattnall County, Georgia. We later lost our stock and got the clone back from Mike Creel, who had received starts from us years before. Such are plant sagas.
Clytostoma callistegioides is one of those vines that feels as though the plant wandered out of an old botanical expedition: vigorous, evergreen, and brimming with the sort of charm collectors once crossed oceans to find. A close relative of our native crossvine (Bignonia capreolata), this South American cousin shares the same athletic climbing spirit but dresses in glossier, more refined foliage and carries larger flowers.
Colquhounia coccinea is a showy, soft-wooded shrub of the mint family, clothed in medium-sized leaves that are downy and pleasantly rough to the touch. Through late summer and fall come dense terminal spikes of orange-scarlet, yellow-throated flowers, a hot late-season color that hummingbirds and pollinating insects work eagerly. Plant in a sunny, well-drained site with good soil, where the arching stems can be trained against a warm wall.
The conradinas are dense, aromatic, low shrubs of the mint family, dressed in small, usually needle-like green or gray leaves and hung with little pale purple flowers. Six or seven species grow wild in the southern United States, most of them in Florida on sand or very sandy soil, and all but this one (and one possibly new species) are federally listed as threatened or endangered. Conradina canescens is the common, widespread member of the clan, a somewhat variable plant of the Gulf Coast dunes of northwest Florida and adjacent Alabama.
