Schima x Franklinia (×Schimlinia floribunda)

×Schimlinia floribunda is one of the rarest woody plants a gardener can grow: a deliberate intergeneric hybrid between two members of the tea family, Theaceae, uniting the fabled Franklinia alatamaha with the Asian evergreen Schima argentea. The cross marries the ornamental drama and hardiness of Franklinia with the vigor, adaptability, and evergreen constitution of Schima, and the result carries large, camellia-like white flowers, glossy foliage, and an upright, well-furnished frame. The hybrid formula name honors both parents at once, Schima and Franklinia folded into a single word.

The hybrid was raised by Dr. Thomas Ranney and colleagues at North Carolina State University's Mountain Horticultural Crops Research Station, from deliberate cross-pollinations made in 1999 and 2000 and repeated in 2002. The hybrid was formally described as ×Schimlinia floribunda in 2003, and the 2002 seedlings first flowered in 2004. The aim was frankly practical: to combine the desirable traits of a nearly impossible garden plant, Franklinia, with the easier temperament of a related genus, and so to carry rare Theaceae genetics into gardens that Franklinia alone would defeat.

Half of that heritage is pure legend. Franklinia alatamaha, named by the botanist explorers John and William Bartram for their friend Benjamin Franklin, was found growing along Georgia's Altamaha River in 1765 and never reliably seen in the wild after the early nineteenth century. Every Franklin tree alive today descends from seed the Bartrams carried home to Philadelphia, which makes the parent one of horticulture's great rescues from extinction. Schima, the other parent, brings the broad evergreen leaves and lasting constitution of the warm-temperate Asian forests, a lineage as tough as Franklinia is delicate.

In the garden, grow ×Schimlinia floribunda as a specimen or a large flowering shrub where the late show can be appreciated up close, for the fragrant white blooms open from late summer into fall when little else in the border is flowering. The glossy, deep-veined leaves hold much of the year, thinning somewhat at the cold edge of the range, so treat the plant as evergreen in the warm South and semi-evergreen where winters bite. High heat and humidity tolerance make ×Schimlinia a natural for southeastern gardens; give a sheltered, part-shaded to sunny site, rich well-drained soil, and the company of camellias, tea olives, and other broadleaf evergreens that share the taste. To grow this hybrid is to keep a living piece of botanical history, and one of the newest chapters in it.

Photo courtesy of Trees and Shrubs Online and Ruth Happel.