Spicebush is the shrub that tells you spring has started in an Eastern woodland. Small yellow-green flowers open along bare gray stems in March, well ahead of the dogwoods, and the whole plant smells of lemon and allspice when a leaf or a twig is broken. In autumn the foliage turns clear butter yellow and the fruit ripens to a hard scarlet drupe unusually rich in fat, which is precisely what a bird heading south is looking for.

Lindera benzoin is also the host plant for the spicebush swallowtail, whose caterpillar folds a leaf into a shelter and wears a pair of false eyespots convincing enough to startle a person, never mind a bird. The plants are dioecious, so fruit follows only where a male grows near a female. Beyond the native, the genus reaches into East Asia for evergreens: Lindera megaphylla with long leathery leaves, and the fragrant Lindera fragrans. Give the native moist shade and a woodland edge, and give the Asian species shelter.