Asimina obovata is the bigflower pawpaw, a Florida native that carries the largest, showiest blooms in a genus better known for its fruit. The pawpaws are the temperate outliers of the Annonaceae, the custard apple family whose tropical members include the cherimoya, soursop, and ylang-ylang, and Asimina alone among them ventures north into the sandy uplands of the American Southeast. The genus name descends from an early Native American word for the fruit, carried into English through the French asiminier, while obovata describes the egg-shaped leaves, broadest above the middle.
The cast iron plant earned the name honestly. Aspidistra elatior is the toughest of evergreen foliage plants, sending up broad, glossy, dark green blades straight from the soil and holding strong form year round in conditions that defeat almost everything else. A Victorian parlor favorite for surviving gaslight and neglect, the cast iron plant is just as valuable in the deep shade of the garden.
A boldly striped form of the cast iron plant, Aspidistra elatior 'Variegata' carries the same broad, leathery, evergreen blades, each brushed lengthwise with bands of creamy white over deep glossy green. The variegation lights up a shaded corner, and the toughness is all there too: this is a near-indestructible evergreen for difficult, low-light places.
Smooth aster is one of the cleanest and most dependable of the fall natives, and 'Bluebird' is among the best forms. Aster laevis 'Bluebird' builds an upright, vase-shaped clump of smooth, blue-green foliage, then opens, in late summer and fall, sprays of violet-blue daisies centered in gold, a generous late feast for bees and butterflies as the season winds down.
Aromatic aster is the toughest and most fragrant of the fall asters, and 'Raydon's Favorite' is the classic selection. Aster oblongifolius 'Raydon's Favorite' forms a dense, rounded mound of small leaves that release a clean, balsam-like scent when brushed, and in early to mid fall vanishes under a haze of lavender-blue, gold-centered daisies.
Aucuba chinensis is the lesser-known Chinese cousin of the familiar gold dust plant, a rare, broad, evergreen shrub for deep shade. The thick, leathery, dark green leaves are coarsely toothed and dusted with scattered yellow flecks, holding their color year round and bringing a glossy, tropical-looking presence to a shaded bed.
Most aucubas demand a matchmaker, a male plant set near a female before a single red berry will form, but Aucuba japonica 'Rozannie' needs no such arrangement. This compact, deep green selection is self-fertile, setting large, glossy scarlet fruit without a separate pollinator, and fruiting even more heavily when a male happens to grow nearby. Add to that lustrous, coarsely toothed, unspotted foliage and a tidy three-to-four-foot frame, and 'Rozannie' becomes one of the most useful aucubas for a shaded garden.
Aucuba japonica is one of the great problem-solvers of the shade garden, a glossy broadleaf evergreen that thrives in the dry, difficult shade where few other shrubs will, and var. borealis is the toughest of the clan. Drawn from the cold northern reaches of the plant's Japanese range, this small-leaved form was selected for hardiness, holding very shiny, dark green, leathery leaves through winters that would burn a common aucuba. The genus name is a Latin rendering of the Japanese aokiba, for the ever-green leaves.
This is one of the quiet mysteries of the Woodlanders collection, a narrow-leaved evergreen aucuba received years ago from the U.S. National Arboretum under the name Aucuba himalayica, and quite possibly the slender japonica form known as 'Longifolia' instead. Either way the plant is a striking departure from the usual aucuba, trading broad, spotted leaves for long, willow-like, finely serrated blades of glossy dark green. Woodlanders has not seen this aucuba offered anywhere else, which makes the plant a true collector's piece whatever the correct name proves to be.
