Fontanesia phillyreioides

Fontanesia is one of those quiet shrubs that rewards a close look and a little curiosity. A deciduous member of the olive family, Oleaceae, and a near relative of the privets, the plant carries narrow, lanceolate, opposite leaves several inches long on a fine, twiggy frame, and shares the easy, adaptable constitution that makes the privets so obliging in difficult ground.

A gentle taxonomic puzzle hangs over the genus. Botanists have long debated whether the shrub of the Middle East and the one of China are one species or two: the former has been called Fontanesia phillyreoides, the latter Fontanesia fortunei, and the two are so alike that even the experts hedge. The plants we offer were labeled as the Middle Eastern species at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia, and are said to be the smaller-growing of the pair.

Whatever the name, the plant can reach a fair size in good conditions. One growing as Fontanesia fortunei in our Citywide Arboretum here in Aiken, South Carolina, stands over twenty feet tall with stems six inches thick, a reminder that this modest privet relative has ambitions once settled in. In late spring, small greenish-white flowers open in slender clusters, followed by flat, winged fruit in the privet manner.

Whatever the label, Fontanesia earns a place as an easy, drought-tolerant screen or informal hedge, a tough and unfussy backdrop that asks little once established. Collectors will want the shrub simply for the pleasure of growing an uncommon olive-family curiosity; everyone else can enjoy a reliable, fine-textured green wall for sun or light shade. Give any soil that drains, full sun to part shade, and room to grow into the ample frame.