Clethra alnifolia 'Ruby Spice'

Clethra alnifolia, the summersweet or sweet pepperbush, is a deciduous native of the eastern United States, at home along pond edges, in damp woods, and at the margins of coastal swamps from Maine to Florida. The species spreads gently by suckers into colonies of upright stems, and earns the name sweet pepperbush from the small, peppercorn-like seed capsules that follow the flowers and hang on through winter. For all that, the summer flowers are the reason to grow them: erect bottlebrush spikes, intensely honey-scented, that open over many weeks in the heat of July and August when little else in the shrub border is in bloom.

'Ruby Spice' is the deepest-colored of the pink forms, and the color holds rather than fading toward white in the heat the way earlier pinks tend to do. The selection arose as a sport of 'Pink Spire' at Broken Arrow Nursery in Hamden, Connecticut, singled out by Andy Brand and introduced with the laurel breeder Dick Jaynes. 'Ruby Spice' remains the most intense pink we have seen, the rose-pink racemes carried against clean, glossy, dark green foliage that turns a clear yellow to gold in autumn.

Few shrubs work so hard for a damp, part-shaded spot. The fragrant late-summer spikes draw bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds in numbers, and a settled colony asks for little beyond steady moisture and an acid soil. Native to the eastern U.S.