Plants with a story that begins in Japan. This collection gathers the trees, shrubs, and perennials of Japanese origin and heritage, from garden classics refined over centuries to the wild species behind them.
Podocarpus macrophyllus, the yew pine, is a familiar evergreen conifer grown as a shrub or small tree across the southern United States, valued for dense, dark, strap-like leaves several inches long and a tidy, upright frame. 'Okina' is the variegated form, a relatively recent introduction from Japan, whose new growth emerges creamy white before settling to soft green.
This low-growing form of Podocarpus macrophyllus is a compact, spreading evergreen with flat, needle-like leaves that spiral tightly around the stems. Where the ordinary yew pine climbs into an upright shrub or small tree, this selection stays low and horizontal, building a dense, glossy green mat of steady year-round texture and structure.
Polygonatum odoratum 'Variegatum', the variegated Solomon's seal, is one of the most graceful of all shade perennials, an Old World cousin of the native Solomon's seals grown for luminous, cream-edged foliage on arching stems. Each lance-shaped leaf carries a soft green center rimmed and streaked in creamy white, and the new stems flush a warm rose before greening.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
1–2 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, pain relief, digestive health, general wellness
Picture a midnight-green fountain unfurling in a woodland garden: that is Polystichum polyblepharum, the Japanese tassel fern. Native to Japan and South Korea, this evergreen fern forms elegant, shuttlecock-shaped clumps of glossy, bipinnate fronds to eighteen or twenty-four inches tall and wide, bringing shimmering texture and structure to shady corners. In spring the fiddleheads twist back on themselves, like silk tassels, before straightening into perfectly arching blades, lending a touch of theatrical grace to the early-season garden.
Prunus japonica, the Japanese bush cherry or Japanese almond-cherry, is a compact deciduous shrub grown for an early flood of delicate pink-to-white bloom. Wiry branches carry dense clusters of five-petaled flowers just as the leaves appear, wrapping the low, rounded frame in soft color in early to mid spring.
Prunus mume, the Japanese flowering apricot, is one of the most beloved of all winter-flowering trees, opening almond-scented blossoms in the depths of winter, from soft white to deep pink, on bare branches while the rest of the garden sleeps. In China and Japan the mei or ume has been celebrated in poetry and painting for well over a thousand years as a symbol of resilience and the turning of the year.
Hardiness
Zones 6–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
18–25 ft.
Spread
12–18 ft.
Bloom
Pink
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
respiratory support, digestive health, general wellness
Prunus mume 'Peggy Clarke' is a selection of the Japanese flowering apricot, a medium-sized deciduous tree grown above all for showy, deeply fragrant blossoms that open in the depths of winter when few other trees are in flower. 'Peggy Clarke' bears rich rose-pink, double, cup-shaped flowers, ruffled and fragrant, crowded along the bare branches in late winter and early spring.
Hardiness
Zones 6–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
15–25 ft.
Spread
12–15 ft.
Bloom
Pink
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
respiratory support, digestive health, general wellness
Pyrrosia lingua 'Kei Kan' is a fern for people who think they do not like ferns. Nothing here is lacy or feathery. The fronds are thick, leathery, and strap-shaped, and in this selection the tips fork and crest into ragged, comb-like divisions, the feature that earns the Japanese name Kei Kan, meaning cockscomb. The overall effect is closer to a piece of green leather sculpture than to the soft filigree most people picture when they hear the word fern.
The cup gives them away. Most oaks set their acorns in a cup of overlapping scales, but Quercus myrsinifolia belongs to the ring-cupped oaks of East Asia, the Cyclobalanopsis, whose acorn sits in a cup banded with smooth concentric rings like a tiny stacked beehive.
'Chapmanii Wonder' is an uncommon and rewarding evergreen rhododendron, the offspring of an inspired cross made by a Japanese breeder between two very different parents. From the endangered Florida native Chapman's rhododendron, Rhododendron chapmanii, the plant inherits broadleaf evergreen foliage and Deep South heat tolerance; from the hardy white-flowered form of Rhododendron dauricum, a species of northeastern Asia, the plant takes cold hardiness and early bloom. The species name dauricum points to Dauria, the region of southeastern Siberia where that parent grows wild, while chapmanii honors Alvan Wentworth Chapman, the nineteenth-century botanist of the Southern flora.
A three-hundred-year-old Japanese garden azalea that does not look quite like a rhododendron, does not look quite like an azalea, and does not really look like anything else. The leaves are narrow green ribbons, three to five millimeters wide and a couple of inches long, closer to willow or fine grass than to the broad rounded foliage of an ordinary tsutsuji. The flowers, opening in late April and May, follow the same grammar: deeply divided into long strap-like petals in lilac-pink to lavender-rose, tangled and knotted at first, then unfurling slowly into a shape that reads, depending on the eye, as a crane fly, a spider, or a piece of decorative garnish. Wabi-sabi made evergreen.
Jetbead is an old-fashioned, exceptionally tough deciduous shrub of the rose family, forming an open, multi-stemmed mound roughly three to six feet tall and four to nine feet wide on arching gray-brown stems. The opposite, sharply toothed leaves break very early in spring, and four-petaled white flowers about two inches across open at the shoot tips in May and June. Clusters of three or four glossy black drupes follow in fall and hang on well into winter, the shining beads that give jetbead the common name.
Here is a salvia that wants what salvias are not supposed to want. Most of the genus comes from sunbaked Mediterranean hillsides, dry Mexican mountains, and dusty California chaparral, so that the very word Salvia is shorthand for full sun, gravelly soil, and a watering regime closer to neglect than care. Salvia koyamae, endemic to the cool wooded slopes of Honshu in Japan, breaks every rule, asking instead for shade, moist humus-rich woodland duff, and the cool morning light that filters through a deciduous canopy. This is, in short, the salvia to grow where hostas would otherwise go.
Shibataea kumasaca is the most civilized of bamboos, a low, dense, evergreen kind grown for tidy structure rather than height. The short, broad, oval leaves are unusual for a bamboo, closer to the foliage of ruscus or a small shrub than to the fine blades most bamboos wear, which is why the plant goes by ruscus-leaf bamboo. Growing to about four or five feet, the canes zigzag gently from node to node, giving a second common name, zig-zag bamboo.
Stauntonia hexaphylla is a handsome, vigorous evergreen climber from the woodlands of Japan, Korea, and China, grown as much for glossy year-round foliage as for the famous fruit. The palmate leaves are cut into five to seven leathery, dark-green leaflets, held on a strong, twining vine that clothes a support densely from top to bottom. A member of the Lardizabalaceae, Stauntonia counts Akebia, the chocolate vine, and Decaisnea, the blue-sausage tree, as relatives.
Styrax obassia, the fragrant snowbell, is the bold-leaved cousin of the more familiar Japanese snowbell, a small deciduous tree from the mountain woodlands of Japan, Korea, and China. Where Styrax japonicus hides small bells beneath fine, layered branches, the fragrant snowbell wears large, rounded, almost tropical leaves up to eight inches across, and hangs long, drooping chains of white, bell-shaped flowers that carry a sweet perfume through the late-spring garden.
