The Ichang papeda is a thorny evergreen small tree of twelve to fifteen feet, and the most cold-tolerant true citrus known to science, reported hardy to roughly five degrees Fahrenheit. The leaves are the tell: unusually large winged petioles, sometimes nearly as big as the blade itself, so each leaf looks like two leaves joined end to end. White flowers open in spring with the sweet heavy scent the whole genus is loved for. Fruit follows, rough-skinned and yellow, orange-sized, packed with large seeds and very little flesh. Sharply aromatic rather than sweet, and nobody would call this dessert fruit, though the zest is fragrant and useful and the juice finds work in marmalade, salt preserving, and drying.
The Yuzuquat is a tri-generic hybrid, a curiosity even among unusual citrus. One parent is the yuzu, itself a cross of Citrus ichangensis and Citrus reticulata; the other is the 'Nagami' kumquat, Fortunella margarita. From that three-way pedigree comes an attractive evergreen citrus that bears sour, juicy, lemon-like fruits about the size of a chicken egg.
Citrus myrtifolia 'Chinotto' is the myrtle-leaf orange, a small, dense, thornless citrus grown as much for beauty as for fruit. The tidy branches carry little pointed leaves like a myrtle's, sweetly fragrant white flowers, and a long-held crop of small, round, bitter oranges. Compact and slow, the chinotto makes an exceptional container or patio plant, an evergreen jewel that flowers and fruits at an easy, manageable size.
NuClem is a special clementine among the cold-hardy citrus, a nucellar selection of the familiar clementine mandarin. Our friend and citrus guru Tom McClendon, who shared this one with us, explains it best: "NuClem is a nucellar Clementine, meaning that it comes true from seed. Most Clementines are polyembryonic, meaning that seeds will almost always produce hybrids with other citrus nearby. NuClem also is distinctive in its cold-hardiness, having proven reliably hardy in Montezuma, GA, making it probably on par with Satsuma. Fruit is globular, about two inches in diameter, with a mildly adherent peel more like an orange than a mandarin. Fruit quality is excellent."
The Meyer lemon is the great container citrus, beloved for thin-skinned, deep yellow-orange fruit that is sweeter and less acidic than a true lemon, and for fragrant, purple-tinged white flowers that come more than once a year. A small evergreen tree, the Meyer is thought to be a natural hybrid of lemon and some other citrus, probably a sweet orange or mandarin, which accounts for the mellow, almost floral flavor that has made the fruit a favorite of cooks.
American yellowwood is one of the loveliest and least common of our native trees, a broad, round-headed deciduous tree grown for three good seasons of interest. In late spring, usually May, long pendulous panicles of white, pea-like flowers hang from the branch tips, sweetly fragrant and wisteria-like, a spectacle in the years the tree chooses to flower heavily. Summer brings clean, bright-then-deep green compound foliage, and autumn a dependable, clear golden yellow that is among the best fall color of any hardwood. The smooth gray bark, beech-like, holds the winter garden.
Clematis armandii is the evergreen clematis, a bold, glossy-leaved vine that breaks nearly every rule of the genus. Where most clematis drop their leaves and climb daintily, this one holds large, leathery, dark green trifoliate leaves the year round and grows with real vigor, then smothers itself in fragrant white flowers at the very start of spring. Few vines open so much bloom so early, and fewer still carry evergreen foliage handsome enough to grow for the leaves alone.
Clematis crispa, the swamp leather flower, is a small and delicate native vine that trades the flat, showy face of a garden clematis for something quieter and stranger. The flowers hang solitary and nodding, little urns of thick, leathery blue-purple, paler within, their four recurved sepals frilled and crimped at the tips like curled ribbon. Slightly fragrant and endlessly charming, this is a clematis scaled for a small garden rather than a barn wall.
Clematis morefieldii, Morefield's leather flower, is one of the rarest of the native clematis, a delicate climbing vine known in the wild from only a small pocket of limestone country around Huntsville, Alabama, and just into Tennessee. Like the other leather flowers, this species trades broad, flat blooms for small, nodding, urn-shaped flowers, here a soft, downy pink, their sepal tips curling back at the rim. The stems and leaves carry a fine coat of whitish hairs, giving the whole plant a soft, silvered look.
Clerodendrum indicum, the Turk's turban, is a bold, tropical-looking perennial that stages two very different shows in a single season. First come tall, nearly unbranched stems, ringed with long narrow leaves and topped in summer by great airy sprays of long-tubed white flowers, shooting outward like a burst of fireworks, which earns the plant its other names, tube flower and skyrocket. Then, as the blooms fade, the real surprise arrives.
A native of China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and parts of South Asia, Clerodendrum trichotomum has been cultivated in Western gardens since the mid-1800s, when the shrub was introduced from Japan and quickly adopted across Europe and the American South for uncanny late-season performance. This is the hardiest member of the genus and, for our money, the most theatrical.
Summersweet, Clethra alnifolia, is one of the great fragrant natives of the eastern United States, a shrub of moist woods and pond edges whose white summer spikes carry a honey-and-clove perfume across the whole garden. Colonists called the plant Sweet Pepperbush, for the peppercorn-like seed heads that follow, and Summersweet, for the scent; the flowers even lather softly in water and once served as a field soap.
Summersweet, or sweet pepperbush, is one of the most useful of the native shrubs for moist, shaded ground, and 'Hummingbird' is the compact, free-flowering selection that made the species a garden staple. Like the straight Clethra alnifolia, this is a stoloniferous deciduous shrub that forms colonies in moist, acid soil, valued above all for the upright spikes of intensely fragrant white flowers that perfume the whole garden in the heat of summer, when little else is blooming.
The Japanese clethra is grown for bark as much as bloom. Clethra barbinervis is a tall, tree-like deciduous shrub or small tree from the mountains of Japan and Korea, carrying somewhat fragrant terminal racemes of white flowers in summer, in the same sweet-scented family as the native summersweets. But the real distinction is the bark: smooth and polished, gray to warm brown, and exfoliating in age to a handsome patchwork that makes this one of the finest small trees for the winter garden.
Most of the summersweets drop their leaves and sleep through winter; Clethra pringlei keeps them. This Mexican member of the clan is a broad-leaved evergreen, a large, slow-growing shrub or small tree from the mountain woodlands of northeastern Mexico, and one of the more surprising plants in the genus for a gardener who knows only the deciduous American kinds.
Clethra alnifolia and the southern Clethra tomentosa are stoloniferous deciduous shrubs commonly called Summersweet or Sweet Pepperbush. They form colonies in moist acid soil and make good garden subjects. They are valued for their terminal spikes of fragrant white flowers in summer. Plant in sun or semi-shade and provide adequate moisture. This clone of the southern species has light colored backs of leaves and amazing flower racemes up to 16 inches long! This Woodlanders introduction is a plant we selected from the wild in the Florida Panhandle. It was the highest rated Clethra clone tested in trials at Longwood Gardens. Clethra tomentosa is native to the southern U.S.
The summersweets are among the most fragrant of American shrubs, and the southern woolly summersweet, Clethra tomentosa, carries the whole tribe's gifts: colonies of upright stems in moist, acid ground, and terminal spikes of white flowers that pour a honey-and-clove perfume across the July garden. Country people knew the plant as Sweet Pepperbush, for the peppercorn seed heads, and the crushed flowers even raise a soft lather once used as a woodland soap.
Cleyera japonica was for generations placed in the tea family, the Theaceae, alongside camellia and tea themselves, and the resemblance still reads in the glossy, leathery, deep green leaves. Later molecular study moved the genus out of that family and into the Pentaphylacaceae, so the old tea-family listing has since been dropped, though the kinship of appearance remains. In the plant's native Japan the species carries a sacred weight few garden shrubs can claim: this is the sakaki, written with a character that fuses the signs for tree and for god, and the branches are cut for tamagushi, the leafy wands offered at Shinto shrines for blessing and purification. Small, sweetly scented cream flowers open in early summer, followed by berries that ripen from red to black.
Cliftonia monophylla 'Berry Pink' is a rare, pink-flowered selection of the Black Titi, a native evergreen shrub or small tree of the southeastern coastal plain that normally blooms in white. The species haunts the acid bogs, pond margins, and titi swamps from the Carolinas to the Gulf, where the early flowers make the buckwheat tree one of the first and most important nectar sources of the southern year, the source of the prized titi honey.
Clinopodium coccineum is a small, aromatic, semi-evergreen subshrub of the mint family, native to the deep, well-drained sands of the southeastern coastal plain from Mississippi and Georgia down into Florida. The loose, open frame and small, spicy-scented leaves would earn a quiet place on their own, but the flowers are the event: scarlet tubes an inch or two long, held out like little trumpets. Bloom comes heaviest in spring and again in fall, with scattered flowers through the summer between, and in the mildest gardens of zones 8 and 9 the plant will open something in almost any month the weather stays soft.
