×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.
Showy skullcap earns the flattering half of the common name honestly: of the eastern woodland skullcaps, Scutellaria serrata carries some of the largest and most richly colored flowers. The genus name comes from the Latin scutella, a little dish or tray, for the small pouch on the upper side of the seed capsule that gives every skullcap its family resemblance. A member of the mint family, Lamiaceae, showy skullcap keeps the square stems and paired leaves of that clan, here with bright green, boldly toothed foliage often edged in wine-red.
Selaginella braunii, known in older texts as Selaginella involvens and in gardens as Braun's spikemoss or the arborvitae fern, belongs to one of the oldest surviving lineages of plants on Earth. The Selaginellas are not true ferns but spikemosses, an ancient group whose ancestry runs back more than three hundred million years, long before flowering plants reshaped the world. In the shaded understory of primeval forests these plants held their ground, and Braun's spikemoss carries that inheritance forward with quiet dignity.
Selaginella moellendorffii is one of those rare plants that quietly remind a gardener how ancient and astonishing the plant kingdom can be. A member of the storied Selaginella lineage, survivors from the Carboniferous coal forests, this spikemoss brings a piece of deep botanical time into the modern shade garden.
Peacock moss is not a moss at all but a very low, spreading fern relative, a spikemoss whose scale-like leaves clothe trailing stems that root as they run and knit into patches across moist, shaded ground. The great distinction of Selaginella uncinata is color: in good light the foliage takes on an iridescent, metallic blue-green sheen, the peacock shimmer that gives the plant a common name.
Saw palmetto is the signature palm of the Deep South, a low, fan-leaved evergreen that carpets the pine flatwoods, scrub, and coastal dunes from the Carolinas through Florida and along the Gulf. The genus honors the American botanist Sereno Watson, and the species name repens, creeping, describes the sprawling habit, while the common name comes from the fierce saw-toothed edges that arm each leaf stalk. Serenoa repens is the only species in the genus, and among the most abundant plants in Florida.
A silver-blue jewel among native palms, this is the rare glaucous form of saw palmetto, the low fan palm that carpets the pine flatwoods and coastal plains of the Deep South. Most saw palmettos wear green leaves, but this selection, native chiefly to the east coast of Florida, holds fans of striking silvery blue, a metallic glaucous bloom that lifts the plant from a workhorse native to an ornamental of real presence.
Serissa foetida 'Kowloon', now more correctly placed as Serissa japonica, is a small, dense evergreen shrub known by a string of affectionate names: snow rose, tree of a thousand stars, and Japanese boxthorn. The genus stands alone in the coffee family, Rubiaceae, a surprising cousin to coffee, gardenia, and pentas. The unlovely species name foetida records the one fault, since bruised leaves and roots give off a faintly unpleasant smell, a small price for so much charm.
Palm grass earns the name at a glance. The broad, pleated blades of Setaria palmifolia fold and arch like the fronds of a young palm, bringing a lush, tropical boldness to a border that most grasses cannot match. This is a plant grown for presence and texture rather than flower, a bright green statement in beds, containers, and the wilder corners of a garden where form is welcome.
Shibataea kumasaca is the most civilized of bamboos, a low, dense, evergreen kind grown for tidy structure rather than height. The short, broad, oval leaves are unusual for a bamboo, closer to the foliage of ruscus or a small shrub than to the fine blades most bamboos wear, which is why the plant goes by ruscus-leaf bamboo. Growing to about four or five feet, the canes zigzag gently from node to node, giving a second common name, zig-zag bamboo.
Silene caroliniana is native in woodlands locally but this selection from our friends at North Creek Nurseries is excellent. Let North Creek tell it: "Delightful, compact and easy to grow, Silene caroliniana is an excellent choice for bright shade or full sun. It is covered in deep pink flowers in late spring. Very reliable for us through wet and dry seasons for three years now and in a cool spring it seems to bloom forever - one year we tracked 8 weeks of full bloom! A great native substitute for Dianthus, this Silene has similar appearance and bloom time, but tolerates a wider variety of garden situations. Silene 'Short and Sweet' is a fantastic plant for naturalizing, yet it can hold its own as a specimen in a container or patio garden as well."
Royal catchfly wears the most electric red in the native flora. Silene regia sends up leafy, upright stems two to four feet tall, topped in mid to late summer with loose clusters of brilliant scarlet, star-shaped flowers, each with five deeply notched petals. Few prairie plants flower in true red, and fewer hold that color through the heat of July and August, which makes this native a genuine standout.
Cup plant is a giant of the summer prairie, a statuesque perennial that rises on stout, square stems to eight feet or more and lifts a crown of bright yellow, daisy-like flowers above the border. The name comes from a quirk of the foliage: the large, coarse leaves are perfoliate, joined in pairs around the stem to form a shallow cup that catches and holds rainwater. Silphium perfoliatum belongs to the sunflower tribe of the aster family, Asteraceae, and shares that clan's generosity of bloom.
Hardiness
Zones 4–8
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
4–8 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
detoxification & cleansing, respiratory support, pain relief, digestive health
Gesneriads are supposed to be houseplants. Somebody should tell Sinningia sellovii, which comes out of a hard woody tuber the size of a fist, throws arching stems three or four feet long, hangs them with scarlet tubular flowers from early summer until frost, and then dies back to the ground and does the whole thing again the following year in USDA zone 7b. Gardeners who know the family only through florist gloxinias tend to find this genuinely disorienting, which is a good reason to grow the plant near the front gate.
Here is a tree almost nobody in American horticulture has grown, and the reason is not that the plant is difficult. Sinoadina racemosa is simply obscure: a deciduous member of the madder family ranging from northern Myanmar and Thailand through southern China, Taiwan, the Ryukyu Islands, and into Japan, running fifteen to forty feet tall with grey trunk bark and smooth young branches. In summer the tree carries small flowers packed tight into spherical heads, the heads themselves gathered into open terminal panicles, which is exactly what the epithet racemosa is pointing at.
Sinojackia xylocarpa is a rare flowering treasure from the hills of eastern China, a deciduous small tree or large shrub that few gardeners have ever met. Known as the jacktree, the species belongs to the storax family, Styracaceae, a close cousin of the snowbells and silverbells, and carries the same poetry of spring: pendant, bell-shaped white flowers that dangle beneath arching branches like small antique lanterns swaying in a breeze.
Sisyrinchium nashii 'Suwannee', Nash's blue-eyed grass, is a small, enchanting native perennial of the Southeastern United States, selected from populations in Florida's Suwannee River basin. Despite the common name, this is no grass at all but a diminutive member of the iris family, Iridaceae, betraying the kinship in the fine, flattened, fan-arranged foliage and the six-parted, star-shaped flowers. The species honors George V. Nash, the American botanist who described so much of the Southeastern flora.
This curious little Smilax is one of the quieter treasures in the Woodlanders catalog, a deciduous groundcover built of fine, twiggy, interlacing stems and small leaves, so densely and geometrically branched that the plant earned the house name Chicken Wire Plant. A member of the greenbrier family, Smilacaceae, this dwarf relative of the climbing greenbriers trades the usual vining habit for a low, intricate, shrubby tangle.
Dwarf greenbrier is the gentlest member of a prickly clan. Where most of the greenbriers, the Smilax vines, arm themselves with vicious hooks, Smilax pumila comes up soft and unarmed, a low, scrambling, evergreen groundcover of the Southeastern coastal plain, safe to handle and easy to place. The mottled, arrow-shaped leaves hold a quiet, marbled green through the year, and on female plants clusters of bright orange to red berries glow in the winter undergrowth like drops of fire.
Florists across the South have a name for the green that turns up at every wedding worth attending and every Christmas mantel worth dressing: Jackson vine. Southern smilax, if that is how you came up. The town of Evergreen, Alabama took its name from this very plant, which gives you some idea how far Smilax smallii has wound itself into the region's notion of celebration. Looped down a staircase, run along an altar, drawn the length of a table, they are the foliage that announces something is happening here.
