Oleander, Nerium oleander, is the great sun-loving evergreen of the Mediterranean, grown since antiquity for a long summer of bloom, with dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves in whorls of three along long, sparingly branched stems. 'Hardy Pink' is one of the cold-tougher selections, carrying showy, lightly fragrant clusters of clear rose-pink flowers from late spring well into fall.
Black gum is one of the longest-lived hardwoods in eastern North America; individual trees have been aged past six hundred and fifty years, standing quietly in swamp margins and rocky uplands while everything human around them came and went. The names alone are a small history lesson. Nyssa was a water nymph of Greek myth, sylvatica means of the woods, so the botanical name reads as water nymph of the forest; tupelo comes from the Creek ito and opilwa, tree and swamp; and the old northern name pepperidge is the one a Connecticut baker borrowed for her farm and her bread company. Curiously, no part of the tree is gummy at all. What black gum does own is the autumn. They are among the first trees to turn and among the fiercest, the glossy summer leaves igniting into scarlet, orange, and deep wine-purple weeks before the rest of the woods has given the season a thought, an early flare that signals birds to the ripening blue fruit. The wood is so cross-grained it is nearly impossible to split, which sent it into tool handles, chopping bowls, and, where trunks went hollow with age, into bee gums, the log hives that made gum a synonym for beehive across Appalachia. Black gum is notoriously hard to move at any size, which is exactly why you so rarely see a big one for sale, and exactly why you should start one small, now, and let them outlive you.
Hardiness
Zones 3–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
60–80 ft.
Spread
30–40 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
digestive health, topical applications, respiratory support, reproductive health
The Nagami kumquat is the easiest citrus most gardeners will ever grow, and the only one meant to be eaten peel and all. Clusters of small, oval, sunset-orange fruit hang against dense, glossy evergreen foliage, each one a burst of contrast: a sweet, tender rind wrapped around bright, tart pulp. Pop them whole for a sweet-and-sour snap, candy the rinds, slice them into a salad, or simmer the winter harvest into jewel-toned marmalade.
There is something almost meditative about Nageia nagi. Named from the Japanese word nagi, meaning both calm and to mow down one's troubles, this ancient conifer carries a quiet gravitas few trees can match. At the Nyakuoji Shrine in Kyoto a sacred nagi tree has stood for centuries, believed to cut through hardship and leave peace in its wake, and sprigs of nagi have long passed between lovers as a token of steadfast devotion, the leaves too tough and resilient to tear easily, a metaphor that has endured for a thousand years.
Heavenly bamboo, Nandina domestica, has been a fixture of Southern gardens for generations, though the plant is no kin to bamboo at all, but a member of the barberry family from East Asia. The likeness is in the look: erect, sparingly branched canes carry large, glossy, fern-like compound leaves that flush red and bronze in cold weather, and the whole plant reads light and airy where a solid evergreen would feel heavy. 'Leucocarpa' is an uncommon selection that trades the usual scarlet berries for creamy pale-yellow ones, otherwise much like the familiar form.
Oleander, Nerium oleander, is a large, sun-loving evergreen shrub of the Mediterranean, grown since antiquity for a long, generous summer of bloom. Dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves ride in whorls of three along the long, sparingly branched stems, and from late spring well into fall the branch tips carry showy, lightly fragrant flower clusters. 'Double Pink' bears fully double, rose-like flowers in a soft, warm pink.
The hardiest yellow oleander in cultivation, and one of the very few oleanders that come in yellow at all. Of the four hundred and more named cultivars of Nerium oleander, the genus runs naturally to white, pink, and red; yellow is the aberration, and a fully double yellow rarer still. 'Double Yellow' is the old French selection that fixed the color.
Oleander, Nerium oleander, is the great sun-loving evergreen of the Mediterranean, grown since antiquity for a long summer of bloom, with dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves in whorls of three along long, sparingly branched stems. 'Hardy Red' is one of the cold-tougher selections, carrying showy, lightly fragrant clusters of bright red flowers from late spring well into fall.
Few shrubs carry as much history as the oleander, grown around the Mediterranean and across the warm world since antiquity. The name Nerium traces to the Greek neros, meaning moist or watery, a nod to the streamsides and dry watercourses where oleander naturally takes hold, while the old name oleander seems to braid together olea, the olive, and the leathery, lance-shaped leaves the two plants share. Those dark green leaves stand in tidy whorls of three along long, sparingly branched stems, giving the shrub a poised, upright architecture even out of flower.
Nerium oleander has been grown around the Mediterranean since antiquity, the name Nerium drawn from the Greek neros, watery, for the streamsides where the shrub grows wild. 'Variegata' brings that ancient toughness together with luminous foliage: narrow, leathery leaves edged in creamy white around a deep green center, held in whorls along the stems so the whole shrub seems lightly frosted even when out of flower.
Nerium oleander is among the oldest shrubs in cultivation, grown around the Mediterranean since antiquity and named from the Greek neros, watery, for the streamsides and washes where oleander grows wild. The dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves sit in tidy whorls of three along long, sparingly branched stems, lending the shrub a clean, upright presence in every season.
Alabama snow-wreath is one of the Southeast's rarest native shrubs and one of the easiest to grow, a combination that ought to put the plant in far more gardens than it occupies. In spring the arching, thicket-forming branches foam with feathery white flowers, and the trick of them is that there are no petals at all: the show is pure stamen, dozens of white filaments per bloom spraying out against five small greenish sepals, like little bottlebrushes of light along the stems.
Nyssa ogeche, the Ogeechee tupelo, is a medium-sized deciduous tree of the southeastern Coastal Plain, at home from southern South Carolina through the Ogeechee valley of Georgia into northern Florida and Alabama. The genus name honors Nyssa, a water nymph of Greek myth, and the tree lives up to the name, thriving along creeks, river swamps, and seasonally flooded bottoms where the soil stays acidic and wet.
