Hamamelis virginiana does everything backwards, and that is the entire appeal. When the rest of the woods has shut down for the year, when the leaves are gone and nothing else is in flower, witch hazel chooses that exact moment to bloom: spidery yellow flowers, all thin crimped strap-like petals, scattered along the bare branches through late fall and into the cold. They carry a faint sweet scent on a mild day and they wait, patiently, for whatever gnat or late fly is still working, because almost nothing else is. This is the shrub that flowers when flowering makes no sense, and is all the more loved for the defiance.
Heimia salicifolia is an airy, fine-textured shrub that carries a surprising amount of history in a modest frame. Slender willow-like leaves clothe the arching stems, and from midsummer into fall small, bright yellow, five-petaled flowers open in the leaf axils all along the branches, each followed by a little dry seed capsule. The overall effect is light and gauzy, a soft yellow haze rather than a bold splash, and the plant grows fast and multi-branched into a rounded, four-to-eight-foot mound.
Firebush earns the name honestly. From late spring until the first frost, the arching branch tips carry tight clusters of slender tubular flowers in hot orange-red, each one a narrow torch held out for the hummingbirds and butterflies that work the plant from morning to dusk. The foliage plays along: new leaves and stems flush bronze to burgundy, the veins stained red, so that even between flushes of bloom the whole shrub reads warm. Few plants pull in as much winged traffic through the heat of a southern summer.
Pineland hibiscus is the wilder, pricklier cousin among the native mallows, and all the more charming for a slightly untamed look. Through the summer the plant opens broad flowers several inches across in soft creamy yellow, each centered on a deep maroon eye, the classic hibiscus form scaled down and set on a low, spreading, bristly frame. The deeply lobed leaves are rough to the touch and the stems carry fine prickles, so the whole plant reads as a hardy native of open, sunny ground rather than a pampered border hybrid.
The name requires a brief clarification, and then we can move on to the more interesting parts. Hibiscus mutabilis has been called the Confederate rose since the nineteenth century, when the plant naturalized so thoroughly in the gardens of the American South that people assumed it belonged there. The plant does not. The species belongs to Hunan Province in China, where gardeners have grown the shrub for nearly three thousand years, where the flower serves as the emblem of Chengdu, a city known on its account as the City of Hibiscus, and where classical texts on materia medica describe the flowers and leaves in medicinal detail. The name stuck here out of regional habit rather than botanical or historical accuracy, and the plant is indifferent to the label.
Hardiness
Zones 8–11
Light
Full Sun
Height
10–15 ft.
Spread
8–10 ft.
Bloom
Pink
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
topical applications, detoxification & cleansing, respiratory support
Hibiscus mutabilis has been grown in Southern gardens for so long that many people assume the shrub is a native, though the species traces to southern China, where gardeners prized the flowers centuries before the plant traveled west. The species name mutabilis, meaning changeable, describes the wild trick of the ordinary Confederate Rose, whose blooms open white in the morning and deepen to pink and then rose-red by evening. 'Rubrum' skips the performance and commits: the single flowers arrive already a saturated rose-red and hold that one deep tone through the day rather than shifting. For gardeners who love the late-season drama of the Confederate Rose but want a single, unwavering color, 'Rubrum' is the selection to plant.
'Annabelle' is a wild American shrub with a hometown. Around 1910 two sisters, Harriet and Amy Kirkpatrick, spotted an unusually full-flowered smooth hydrangea in the woods of Union County, Illinois, dug the plant, and grew it in their garden in the town of Anna. For half a century the shrub passed hand to hand around southern Illinois as a nameless local treasure, until the University of Illinois plantsman Dr. Joseph C. McDaniel traced the trail back to Anna in the 1960s, selected the plant, and released it for sale in 1962. The name 'Annabelle' honors both the town and the Kirkpatrick belles who found the shrub: Anna plus belle.
Hypericum prolificum lives up to the name, prolific, disappearing each summer under a heavy crop of bright yellow flowers, each three-quarters of an inch to an inch across and stuffed with a golden brush of stamens. The shrub is dense and rounded, with arching branches, narrow shiny leaves, and reddish, exfoliating bark that peels to show paler layers once the foliage thins.
