Leatherleaf is the quiet constant of the northern bog. Chamaedaphne calyculata, the only species in the genus, is a low, thicket-forming evergreen of the heath family that ranges right around the cold northern world, from the peatlands of North America east to the bogs of Finland and Japan, and southward in this country to the pocosins and acid bogs of the coastal plain, as far as South Carolina. Across that vast range, leatherleaf forms the dense, spreading colonies that hold a bog together and shelter the wildlife within.
The turtlehead is named twice over for things that go quiet. The genus Chelone is the Greek word for tortoise, after a nymph who mocked the marriage of Zeus and Hera and was turned, for her insolence, into a creature that carries her house and holds her tongue; one look at the flower, a hinged, swollen, pink-and-gaping thing that seems about to either speak or bite, and you see why the name stuck. The species honors John Lyon, the Scottish plant hunter who worked the southern Appalachians in the footsteps of Bartram and Michaux. Lyon collected this turtlehead somewhere in the mountains around 1812 without recording quite where, noting only in his catalog that here was a new species, and a beautiful one; his friend Frederick Pursh later pinned Lyon's name to the plant. Lyon did not have long to enjoy the honor, dying in 1814 in the same southern mountains that had made his name. The plant has fared better. Chelone lyonii grows wild along streambanks and seeps in the high southern Appalachians, and 'Hot Lips' is the selection that turned the color up, deeper rose-pink flowers over foliage that emerges with a bronze cast. The flowers arrive in late summer and run into fall, which is the real gift, holding color in the moist and shaded corners just as the rest of the garden tires. Only a bumblebee is strong enough to force the blooms open, so a planting in flower comes with a low percussion of bees muscling in and backing out. Give them wet feet and a little shade and there is very little that does a damp, difficult spot this gracefully, or this late.
In the dead of winter, when the garden has given up on color and scent alike, Chimonanthus praecox quietly does the impossible. On bare, leafless branches, often in January and February, the wintersweet opens small, waxy, cupped stars of translucent pale yellow, each flushed at the heart with maroon, and from them pours a fragrance so rich and far-carrying that a single sprig will perfume a room. The Chinese name, la mei, the wax plum, catches the look of the petals exactly.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
12–15 ft.
Spread
8–10 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, general wellness, mental & emotional well-being
For a week or two in late spring, the Chinese fringetree disappears under snow. Chionanthus retusus var. serrulatus is a deciduous small tree of East Asia, native to China, Korea, and Japan, and the great show is the flowering: dense, lacy, fringed panicles of pure white, each petal narrow and strap-like, smothering the canopy so thickly that the foliage all but vanishes. The genus name says as much, from the Greek chion, snow, and anthos, flower.
The native fringetree is one of the great small trees of the southern spring. Chionanthus virginicus, a deciduous large shrub or small tree, often multi-stemmed, hangs the whole canopy with fleecy, drooping panicles of narrow white petals in spring, soft as torn paper and lightly fragrant, a look that earned the old country names old man's beard and grancy graybeard. On female plants the flowers give way to clusters of raisin-sized, deep blue-purple fruits that birds take quickly.
Chitalpa tashkentensis is a plant with a passport, an intergeneric hybrid that pairs the American desert willow, Chilopsis linearis, with a catalpa, and carries the frilled trumpet flowers of one parent on the willowy, drought-hardy frame of the other. The name itself is a splice, Chilopsis joined to Catalpa, while tashkentensis records the birthplace, the botanical garden at Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, where the cross was raised in the 1960s. From that single Central Asian introduction descend the chitalpas grown across America today.
Choisya is a small genus of aromatic evergreen shrubs from the southwestern United States and Mexico, kin to citrus in the rue family, and Choisya 'Aztec Pearl' is the garden world's favorite of the tribe. The hybrid, a cross between Choisya arizonica and Choisya ternata, was raised by Peter Moore at Longstock Park Nursery in England, and the selection has proved hardier, more heat tolerant, and altogether easier in the garden than either parent.
Cinnamomum burmannii is the tree behind most of the cinnamon in an American kitchen, an evergreen of the laurel family whose fragrant inner bark, dried and ground, fills the great majority of the spice jars labeled simply cinnamon. Native to the highlands of Indonesia and across tropical Southeast Asia, this glossy-leaved tree is a cassia cinnamon, close kin to true Ceylon cinnamon, to the camphor tree, and to bay laurel, sassafras, and avocado. The whole plant is aromatic, from the leathery leaves to the spicy bark.
A rare evergreen tree from southern China, seldom seen in cultivation, Cinnamomum wilsonii belongs to the cinnamon and camphor clan, and the kinship shows in the glossy, leathery, dark green leaves, four to five inches long and marked with three bold veins that run nearly to the tip. Crushed or bruised, the foliage and bark give off the warm, spicy fragrance the genus is loved for. The Chinese name, chuan gui, places the tree in Sichuan and the mountains of the south, where the tree grows large and the aromatic bark has long been valued.
Cistus x corbariensis is a white rockrose, one of the toughest and most charming of the Mediterranean sun shrubs, covered through late spring and early summer in flowers like small single roses. Each bloom is pure white with a gold eye, the petals crinkled like tissue paper, opening from buds tinged red and lasting a single day before the next takes over. Despite the name, a rockrose is no relation to the true roses, belonging instead to the Cistaceae, the rockrose family of the dry Mediterranean hills.
The rockroses bloom as if for a single day, and in a sense they do. Each papery flower of Cistus x purpureus lasts only from morning to evening before dropping, yet through late spring the shrub opens fresh bloom after fresh bloom, so the whole plant seems perpetually covered. The flowers are the draw: two to three inches wide, crushed-silk petals of pinky purple, each stamped at the base with a deep maroon blotch, a marking that earned the old garden name orchidspot rockrose. Rockroses are not roses, and are not related; the resemblance is only in the open, five-petalled face.
The Ponderosa lemon is grown for spectacle as much as for the kitchen. The fruits are enormous, often two to four pounds each, thick-skinned and gloriously bumpy, hanging like green-gold cannonballs among the glossy leaves. For all the size, the flesh is tart, juicy, and true lemon in flavor, and works in any recipe a regular lemon would, with the novelty of a single fruit that can fill a hand.
The Rangpur is not truly a lime at all, but Indian gardeners have used the fruit as one for more than five hundred years. Citrus x limonia, an old natural hybrid of mandarin and citron, bears small, round, deep orange fruits that look like tangerines and taste fiercely sour, with the aromatic bite that makes a fine lime substitute for cooking, cocktails, and marmalade. In India the fruit goes by surkh nimboo, the red lime, prized for exactly that intense, tart juice.
Among the very first of the citranges, Citrus 'Rusk' dates to 1897, when Walter Swingle crossed a Ruby orange with the tough, cold-hardy trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata, in the great effort to breed citrus that could take a freeze. The result is a vigorous, tall-growing, notably hardy tree, evergreen to semi-evergreen, and dense with the distinctive three-parted trifoliate leaves.
Named for Walter Tennyson Swingle, the pioneering citrus breeder who spent his career crossing tender oranges with the iron-hardy trifoliate orange, the Swingle citrumelo is among the toughest citrus hybrids ever raised. A cross of grapefruit, Citrus paradisi, and trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata, this vigorous, thorny, semi-evergreen shrub or small tree carries fragrant white citrus blossoms in spring, followed by pear-shaped yellow fruits about the size of a large orange.
Woodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and the Troyer citrange is a classic of the kind. A cross of the Washington navel orange and the inedible but iron-hardy trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata, the Troyer was raised in 1909 under the direction of the great citrus breeder Walter Swingle, and later named for A. M. Troyer of Fairhope, Alabama, where the tree first bore fruit, a nice southern footnote for a hardy citrus.
Woodlanders has long led in offering citrus and citrus hybrids hardy well beyond the usual citrus belt, and U.S. 119 is one of the most refined of the group. A complex USDA hybrid, a citrumelo crossed back with a sweet orange, the tree runs one quarter trifoliate orange, one quarter grapefruit, and one half sweet orange, a pedigree chosen to keep the toughness of the trifoliate while pushing the fruit toward genuine quality.
US-942 began life as a rootstock, bred by the USDA and released in 2010 after years of Florida field trials, a careful cross of the Sunki mandarin and the curious Flying Dragon form of trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata. As a rootstock the record is stellar: compact, productive trees, strong resistance to Phytophthora and tristeza virus, and better tolerance of citrus greening than most, which is why growers across the citrus belt have come to trust the number.
The sour orange is grown across the warm world as an ornamental and even a street tree, and stands somewhat naturalized in Florida. The fruit is famous for marmalade and useful little else, since the flesh is fiercely sour and bitter, not for eating out of hand. This particular unnamed selection has a Woodlanders story: we propagated the tree from a single specimen found growing on the edge of an abandoned sandy field in a remote corner of Appling County, Georgia, with no house anywhere near. What drew us was the crop, abundant, large, and very showy, loose-skinned and easy to peel.
Among the more intriguing fruits in the Woodlanders citrus collection, the Gou Tou sour orange stands apart, not only for rarity but for a rare combination of hardiness, heavy fruiting, and surprisingly pleasant flavor. Widely cultivated in Southeast Asia, Citrus aurantium 'Gou Tou' carries the form of a traditional bitter orange but with a taste that leans toward grapefruit, which makes this one of the most palatable sour oranges a gardener outside the subtropics can grow.
