Hydrangea quercifolia 'Snowflake'

The oakleaf hydrangea is the great four-season native shrub of the American Southeast, a large deciduous plant with oak-like leaves, white summer panicles, and peeling cinnamon bark. Hydrangea quercifolia grows wild in the rich woods of a small range centered on Alabama, where the naturalist William Bartram admired the shrub in the 1770s, and where the oakleaf now serves as the state wildflower. 'Snowflake' is one of our favorites, and one of the most distinctive oakleafs ever selected.

Found and named by Eddie Aldridge of Aldridge Gardens in Hoover, Alabama, 'Snowflake' carries double flowers: each sterile floret sits layered behind another in overlapping, imbricated bracts, so the long fifteen-inch panicles look stacked and full, like drifts of snow caught on the branch. As the flowers age they take on rose and antique-pink tints, and the doubled bracts hold on far longer than a single-flowered oakleaf.

Behind the flowers stands the rest of the oakleaf's four-season show. The big, oak-lobed leaves turn deep red, purple, and bronze in fall and hang on for weeks, and the cinnamon bark peels in papery curls once the leaves drop, keeping the shrub handsome through winter. Now widely grown in Southern gardens, 'Snowflake' has earned the reputation.

The long, heavy panicles show best where they can be seen up close and given room, at a woodland edge, in a large shaded border, or beside a path. Plant 'Snowflake' in fertile, moist, well-drained soil in shade or part shade, or full sun with mulch and steady water, and prune only just after flowering, since next year's buds form on old wood. Against a dark green backdrop the white doubled cones seem to glow.