Cyrilla racemiflora

Titi is one of the quiet workhorses of the southern wetland, an evergreen to semi-evergreen shrub or small tree that ranges farther than almost any other native of the region, from the coastal plain of southern Virginia down through Florida and west to eastern Texas. In the wild the plant haunts the edges of swamps, bays, and blackwater streams, standing in the wet, acid ground where few woody plants thrive, yet takes with surprising ease to ordinary garden soil.

The genus honors Domenico Cirillo, the Neapolitan botanist and physician, and Cyrilla wears several country names that each catch something true. Leatherwood and burnwood bark point to the tough, spongy bark and the twisted stems that peel in cinnamon flakes on an old plant; titi is the older vernacular of the Deep South. For years botanists puzzled over how far the range really ran, since look-alike material from the West Indies and tropical America was once folded into the same species and is now kept separate, which leaves Cyrilla racemiflora as a plant of the southeastern United States after all.

Summer is the season to notice Titi. Long, slender racemes of tiny white flowers pour from the branch tips in profusion, lightly fragrant and loud with bees, and the plant counts among the more important nectar sources of the southern honey flow, giving a dark, distinctive honey. There is a catch that beekeepers know well, since the pollen has been linked to purple brood, a condition that can trouble honeybee larvae, so Titi is generous and complicated in equal measure. The show carries on into fall, when the glossy foliage colors warm orange and red where the winters turn cool.

In the garden, use Titi as a large multi-stemmed shrub or a small specimen tree along a pond edge, in a rain garden, or in any wet, difficult corner where little else will hold, though the plant is equally willing in an ordinary border. Site where the fragrant summer bloom and the pollinator traffic can be enjoyed up close, and let Titi screen or naturalize alongside clethra, itea, and native bay. Because Woodlanders ships across the country, expect evergreen to semi-evergreen foliage in the Deep South and a more deciduous, warmly coloring habit toward the northern end of the range.

Photo courtesy of Julia.