Magnolia virginiana, the sweetbay magnolia, has long been a tree of distinction in the American landscape, ranging from the cool wetlands of Massachusetts to the Gulf Coast. Across that span the species wears two very different guises. In the northern states the sweetbay is a smaller, often shrubby tree that drops its leaves in winter; in the Deep South the species reaches fullest expression as Magnolia virginiana var. australis, the evergreen southern sweetbay, a large and enduring tree of great grace.
Morella pumila is the dwarf waxmyrtle, a low, native evergreen that keeps everything gardeners love about the common wax myrtle, aromatic foliage, waxy berries, and a tough constitution, and shrinks it all to knee height. Native to the frequently burned pinelands of the southern United States, the plant is an adaptation to that fiery world, staying small and spreading slowly into dense patches and colonies by underground runners.
Myrcianthes fragrans is a member of the myrtle family native to the hammocks and coastal scrub of Florida and the Caribbean, the same botanical neighborhood as guava and allspice, which says something about the family character and the quality of the fragrance involved. Crush a leaf and the scent is immediate and specific: nutmeg with a citrus edge, clean and resinous in a way that makes the plant worth encountering even out of flower. The tiny, deep green leaves hold the aromatic oils responsible, and keep that quality year-round.
Magnolia ashei, the Ashe magnolia, is one of the great show-offs of the plant world packed into a shrub-sized frame. The enormous leaves, often two feet long and nearly a foot wide, give a decidedly tropical air, and the flowers are astonishing: creamy-white goblets up to a foot across, sweetly fragrant, each marked with a bold purple blotch at the base of the inner petals. Best of all, the Ashe magnolia blooms while still young and small, sometimes at barely knee height, a rare gift among magnolias.
Magnolia ashei × macrophylla is a rare hybrid of colossal foliage and dinner-plate blooms, a deliberate cross between two of North America's most dramatic native magnolias: the endangered Ashe magnolia, Magnolia ashei, and the bigleaf magnolia, Magnolia macrophylla. The cross brings together the best of both parents, the immense tropical-looking leaves, the enormous fragrant flowers, and a habit that settles into a handsome middle ground between shrub and small tree.
Magnolia cordata is the yellow cucumbertree, a smaller, more garden-friendly cousin of the towering cucumbertree magnolia and, botanically, a variety of it, Magnolia acuminata var. subcordata. Where the parent species climbs seventy feet and hides greenish flowers high in the canopy, this yellow-flowered form stays a modest tree of twenty-five to thirty-five feet and carries the trait breeders have chased for generations: tulip-shaped blooms of clear, canary yellow.
Magnolia figo, the banana shrub, is one of those old Southern garden treasures that scent a whole spring evening, and 'Port Wine' is a fine, deep-colored form. Long grown under the name Michelia figo and only lately folded into the genus Magnolia, the plant makes a large, dense, lustrous evergreen shrub or small tree, handsome in leaf all year but grown, above all, for the perfume.
Magnolia kobus, the kobus magnolia, is a hardy, deciduous magnolia from Japan, grown for a froth of white, lightly fragrant flowers on bare branches in earliest spring. The Japanese name kobushi, from which the species takes its epithet, means fist, a nod to the plump flower buds and knobby young fruit that look like a small clenched hand.
Magnolia macrophylla, the bigleaf magnolia, holds a national record: the largest simple leaves and the largest flowers of any tree native to North America. A deciduous magnolia of rich, sheltered woodlands scattered from West Virginia south to Louisiana and Florida, the tree is scarce in the wild and unforgettable in leaf, with blades up to three feet long and a foot wide, deep green above and a soft silvery white beneath that flashes when the wind turns them.
Magnolia sprengeri 'Diva' is the aristocrat of the pink magnolias, a large, rare deciduous tree from the mountains of western China that smothers itself in spring with big, saucer-shaped flowers of deep rose-pink, sweetly fragrant and opening on bare branches before the leaves. Six to eight inches across and carried in abundance, the blooms make one of the most breathtaking sights in the early garden, yet the tree remains surprisingly little known in American gardens.
Magnolia stellata 'Royal Star' is the star magnolia at its best, a hardy, rounded shrub that opens its first flowers at the very end of winter, well before the leaves, in a froth of white, many-petaled stars. Each bloom carries a dozen or more narrow, strap-like tepals that give a soft, feathery look, and the whole plant can vanish under bloom in a good year, sweetly fragrant into the bargain.
Sweetbay magnolia is one of the loveliest and most useful of the native magnolias, a tree of moist and swampy ground across the eastern United States from Massachusetts to Texas. The northern plants, Magnolia virginiana var. virginiana, are shrubby and deciduous; the southern, var. australis, grow into larger, evergreen trees. All share the sweetbay's gifts: leaves silvery white beneath that flash in the wind, and creamy, intensely fragrant flowers with a clean lemon scent.
Sweetbay magnolia ranges across the moist ground of the eastern United States, from Massachusetts to Texas, and in the South becomes the larger, evergreen tree botanists call Magnolia virginiana var. australis. 'Santa Rosa' is a superior evergreen selection of that southern variety, a Woodlanders introduction gathered in Santa Rosa County, in the Florida panhandle.
Sweetbay is one of the loveliest and most useful of the native magnolias, and this is Sweetbay from the far western edge of the range, the big-leaved, big-flowered form of the Louisiana and east Texas country long known in gardens as Magnolia virginiana ludoviciana. Set against the typical species, these western-Gulf plants carry noticeably larger leaves and flowers, with soft down on the undersides of the leaves and on the flower buds, and grow as small to medium trees of a more open, airy habit.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
20–35 ft.
Spread
15–20 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
respiratory support, general wellness, pain relief
There is something quietly instructive about the range of Magnolia virginiana. The species runs from the cold, swampy woods of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where a small population clings to the northern edge of the natural territory, all the way down to the Gulf Coast of Texas, a span of climate and geography that would seem to demand two entirely different plants. In the North the sweetbay obliges by turning deciduous, multi-stemmed, and compact, staying modest in deference to the winters. In the South the same species becomes something else entirely, a tall, evergreen tree of real stature. Botanists eventually gave the northern form a name of its own, var. virginiana, and that is what Woodlanders grows here, raised from seed collected at the Massachusetts limit of the range.
Hardiness
Zones 5–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
20–40 ft.
Spread
15–20 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
respiratory support, pain relief, general wellness
Manfreda maculosa carries the rugged beauty of the American Southwest into the garden. Known by a string of evocative names, Texas tuberose, spice lily, and rattlesnake agave, this striking plant hails from the arid country of Texas and northern Mexico, where the spotted leaves and tall, aromatic flower stalks have caught the eye of gardeners and naturalists for generations.
The Meiwa kumquat is the sweet one, the kumquat you can pop whole into your mouth and eat skin and all. A small, tidy, evergreen citrus, Fortunella crassifolia carries round, bright orange fruit a little over an inch across, and where most kumquats offer a sweet rind wrapped around sharply sour pulp, the Meiwa softens the contrast: the peel is thick and honey-sweet, the flesh only mildly tart, so the whole fruit eats like candy off the branch.
'Jacob Cline' is the beebalm to beat for sheer red, a native perennial that throws big, deep-crimson flowerheads on tall stems through the heart of summer. The whorled, tubular blooms sit atop four to five feet of square, mint-family stems, and they pull in hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies with a persistence few perennials match; in one major trial 'Jacob Cline' was the single best beebalm for hummingbirds.
Monarda fistulosa, wild bergamot, is one of the great native perennials of the North American prairie, a hardy, aromatic member of the mint family loved for showy heads of lavender-pink and for a fragrance like oregano crossed with mint. The species grows wild in meadows, prairies, and open woods across most of the continent, and brings both vivid summer color and a deep well of history to the garden.
The bayberry candle is one of those traditions so old it has become purely symbolic, burned at Christmas for luck, the scent faint and slightly waxy and unlike anything paraffin has managed to replicate in three centuries of trying. Most people who burn one have no idea what plant produced it, or that the plant is still out there, growing in sandy pocosins and coastal flats from New Jersey to the Gulf, doing quiet work in the margins of the southeastern landscape. That plant is Morella caroliniensis.
