Sweetbay is one of the loveliest and most useful of the native magnolias, and this is Sweetbay from the far western edge of the range, the big-leaved, big-flowered form of the Louisiana and east Texas country long known in gardens as Magnolia virginiana ludoviciana. Set against the typical species, these western-Gulf plants carry noticeably larger leaves and flowers, with soft down on the undersides of the leaves and on the flower buds, and grow as small to medium trees of a more open, airy habit.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
20–35 ft.
Spread
15–20 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
respiratory support, general wellness, pain relief
There is something quietly instructive about the range of Magnolia virginiana. The species runs from the cold, swampy woods of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where a small population clings to the northern edge of the natural territory, all the way down to the Gulf Coast of Texas, a span of climate and geography that would seem to demand two entirely different plants. In the North the sweetbay obliges by turning deciduous, multi-stemmed, and compact, staying modest in deference to the winters. In the South the same species becomes something else entirely, a tall, evergreen tree of real stature. Botanists eventually gave the northern form a name of its own, var. virginiana, and that is what Woodlanders grows here, raised from seed collected at the Massachusetts limit of the range.
Hardiness
Zones 5–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
20–40 ft.
Spread
15–20 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
respiratory support, pain relief, general wellness
Magnolia x foggii '#2' is a handsome evergreen hybrid, a large shrub or small upright tree grown for glossy year-round foliage and a generous early-spring flush of white, magnolia-like flowers about three inches across. The long, leathery leaves, three to five inches each, give the plant a lush, substantial look, and even a young plant flowers well.
Malvaviscus arboreus, affectionately known as Turk's cap, has charmed gardeners for generations with vibrant, coiled blooms that never quite open, each red flower staying furled like a little turban, which is exactly how the plant earned its name. A close cousin of the hibiscus in the mallow family, Malvaceae, this tough, subtropical shrub carries a story as rich as the scarlet flowers, and two more common names besides: wax mallow and sleeping hibiscus.
This is the white-flowered small Turk's cap, an uncommon and quietly beautiful form of the normally scarlet Malvaviscus drummondii. The flowers keep the familiar furled, never-opening Turk's cap shape, under two inches long and produced steadily through the hot months, but open in clean, soft white rather than red, a cool and unexpected note in the summer garden.
This shrubby plant has showy red flowers and leaves that are intermediate between the parent species (which see). A relatively recent Texas introduction by Greg Grant, this should prove a garden worthy plant that is likely to be a bit more cold-hardy than the Malvaviscus arboreus parent. Some consider Malvaviscus drummondii to be a variety of Malvaviscus arboreus but we find them quite different and distinct.
The firecracker vine earns the name in high summer, when a delicate twining stem lights up with a long, generous run of small, scarlet, tubular flowers. Manettia cordifolia is the true red-flowered species, all crimson with no yellow tip, quieter in vigor than the candy-corn firecracker vines of the houseplant trade, and the better-mannered for that, climbing just enough to be useful without ever becoming a thug.
Manfreda maculosa carries the rugged beauty of the American Southwest into the garden. Known by a string of evocative names, Texas tuberose, spice lily, and rattlesnake agave, this striking plant hails from the arid country of Texas and northern Mexico, where the spotted leaves and tall, aromatic flower stalks have caught the eye of gardeners and naturalists for generations.
Mascagnia macroptera, the butterfly vine, is a Mexican native climber grown for one of the most charming novelties in the plant world: seed pods shaped exactly like butterflies. Each pod is a pair of papery wings, chartreuse-green at first and drying to tan, so a vine in fruit looks as though a flock of little green and brown butterflies has settled among the leaves.
The 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.
'Jacob Cline' is the beebalm to beat for sheer red, a native perennial that throws big, deep-crimson flowerheads on tall stems through the heart of summer. The whorled, tubular blooms sit atop four to five feet of square, mint-family stems, and they pull in hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies with a persistence few perennials match; in one major trial 'Jacob Cline' was the single best beebalm for hummingbirds.
Monarda fistulosa, wild bergamot, is one of the great native perennials of the North American prairie, a hardy, aromatic member of the mint family loved for showy heads of lavender-pink and for a fragrance like oregano crossed with mint. The species grows wild in meadows, prairies, and open woods across most of the continent, and brings both vivid summer color and a deep well of history to the garden.
The bayberry candle is one of those traditions so old it has become purely symbolic, burned at Christmas for luck, the scent faint and slightly waxy and unlike anything paraffin has managed to replicate in three centuries of trying. Most people who burn one have no idea what plant produced it, or that the plant is still out there, growing in sandy pocosins and coastal flats from New Jersey to the Gulf, doing quiet work in the margins of the southeastern landscape. That plant is Morella caroliniensis.
Morella pumila 'Willow Leaf' is a distinctive, fine-leaved form of the native dwarf waxmyrtle, selected for narrow, elongated, willow-like leaves that give the low shrub an unusually elegant, airy texture rarely seen in the species. Like the wild plant, this is a low, spreading, colony-forming evergreen of the fire-adapted pinelands of the southeastern United States, once listed as Myrica pusilla and now placed in the genus Morella.
The red mulberry, Morus rubra, is the eastern woodlands' own mulberry, a medium to large deciduous tree native across the eastern United States from New England to Texas. The genus name Morus is simply the old Latin word for mulberry, and rubra, red, points less to the ripe fruit, which darkens to near black, than to the reddish cast of the young growth. Broad, heart-shaped, sandpaper-rough leaves clothe a wide, rounded crown, and where a female tree grows the summer branches hang heavy with blackberry-like fruit.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
40–60 ft.
Spread
25–35 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
digestive health, topical applications, general wellness
Few native grasses put on a show like Muhlenbergia capillaris. For most of the year pink muhly is a modest, upright tuft of fine, wiry, dark green blades, easy to overlook. Then, in the shortening days of autumn, the whole clump erupts into a haze of tiny flowers, an airy cloud of pink to rose-red that seems to hover a foot above the foliage and glows when backlit by low sun. Massed in a drift, the effect is one of the most spectacular in the fall garden.
Southern wax myrtle is one of the hardest-working native evergreens of the Southeast, and 'Emperor' is a nursery selection of that adaptable shrub. Fast-growing and densely branched, wax myrtle forms a large evergreen shrub or a small multi-trunked tree, clothed in narrow, olive-green leaves that release a clean, spicy, bayberry scent when crushed. The plant thrives where many shrubs fail, from wet ground to dry sand, in sun or shade, on the coast or inland.
Myrica rubra, 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.
Myrtus communis, the true myrtle, is a dense evergreen shrub of the Mediterranean, clothed in small, glossy, aromatic leaves and starry white flowers, and few garden plants carry so much history. Sacred to Aphrodite and to her Roman counterpart Venus, myrtle has stood for love, beauty, and marriage since antiquity, woven into bridal wreaths from ancient Greece to Victorian England, and a sprig from Queen Victoria's own bouquet founded a myrtle whose descendants still supply royal wedding flowers today.
Hardiness
Zones 8–11
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
6–9 ft.
Spread
6–8 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, topical applications, digestive health
The Nagami kumquat is the easiest citrus most gardeners will ever grow, and the only one meant to be eaten peel and all. Clusters of small, oval, sunset-orange fruit hang against dense, glossy evergreen foliage, each one a burst of contrast: a sweet, tender rind wrapped around bright, tart pulp. Pop them whole for a sweet-and-sour snap, candy the rinds, slice them into a salad, or simmer the winter harvest into jewel-toned marmalade.
