Plants That Start with "V"

Sold as a 3-gallon plant, pick up only.

Hardiness

Zones 6–9

Light

Full Sun

Height

4–6 ft.

Spread

3–5 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Blue vervain rises in summer as a candelabra of slender, pencil-thin spikes, each one lit from the base upward with tiny, five-lobed flowers in a saturated purplish blue that few native perennials can match. Verbena hastata is a clump-forming perennial of eastern North America, reaching two to four feet in good ground and occasionally stretching to six, on stiff, square, hairy stems that branch toward the top. The lance-shaped leaves are sharply toothed and rough to the touch, a coarse green foil for the refined flower spikes above. Bloom comes slowly and deliberately from July into September, only a few florets open on each spike at any moment, so the plant seems to smolder for weeks rather than flare all at once.

Hardiness

Zones 3–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

2–6 ft.

Spread

1–3 ft.

Bloom

Blue

Plant type

Perennial

Traditional use

mental & emotional well-being, respiratory support, pain relief, topical applications, digestive health

Ironweed earns the name twice over. The stems are stiff enough to stand through a hurricane season without staking, and the seedheads that follow the flowers rust to the exact color of weathered iron. But the reason to grow Vernonia noveboracensis is the purple: not the tidy lavender of garden asters but a saturated, almost fluorescent violet that arrives in late July and holds into October, riding five to eight feet up on strong green stems above a mass of long, finely toothed leaves. Few native perennials carry a color this pure so late in the year.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

5–8 ft.

Spread

3–4 ft.

Bloom

Purple

Plant type

Perennial

Traditional use

reproductive health, digestive health, pain relief, detoxification & cleansing, general wellness

'Chindo' is a bold, glossy-leaved evergreen viburnum, a vigorous selection grown for both ornamental drama and Southern toughness, hung in season with cascading clusters of brilliant red fruit. Few broadleaf evergreens offer this combination of shine, structure, and seasonal display at so substantial a scale.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

12–15 ft.

Spread

5–6 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

The cinnamon-leaf viburnum is one of the great broadleaf evergreens of the genus, a substantial, dignified shrub from the mountain forests of western China, where mist gathers in the valleys and plants grow with quiet endurance. The species name cinnamomifolium means leaves like cinnamon, for the large, glossy, deeply triple-veined leaves that echo those of a true cinnamon tree, tooled and leathery as fine bookbinding. This is a plant that holds the line rather than blooms and fades with the hour.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

8–10 ft.

Spread

6–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Carl Peter Thunberg, the Swedish physician who talked his way onto the Dutch trading island of Dejima in 1775 and used the post to become one of the first Europeans to seriously botanize a closed Japan, was the first to describe this plant to science. Richard Oldham, the last of the great Kew collectors, gathered the shrub again near Nagasaki in 1862 and called the plant, a little dismissively, a small tree on the hills. In a garden the plant never quite loses that ambition, settling instead into a sturdy, slow evergreen bush.

Hardiness

Zones 8–9

Light

Part Shade

Height

6–8 ft.

Spread

6–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Luzon viburnum is one of the quiet unknowns of Southern gardening, a handsome large shrub grown around Houston for years and almost nowhere else in the United States. Woodlanders collected this plant in the Houston area, where the species had already proven durable and undemanding in Gulf Coast heat. Viburnum luzonicum comes from open forest, scrub, and roadside thickets across southern China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and the epithet points to Luzon, largest of the Philippine islands, from which Robert Allen Rolfe described the species at Kew.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

8–15 ft.

Spread

8–12 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

They carry their Roman name almost unchanged. Tinus was what the Romans called the shrub two thousand years ago, the name Pliny the Elder set down in his Natural History, and when Linnaeus came to catalogue them he simply kept it. The reason gardeners have held onto Viburnum tinus just as long is that they flower in the cold. While the rest of the garden is shut down for winter, they cover themselves in tight clusters of deep carmine buds that open a few at a time across weeks into small white flowers, so they carry both colors at once through the bleakest stretch of the year. The foliage is the second argument, dense and dark and glossy, evergreen to the ground with none of the gapping that lesser shrubs fall into. 'Spring Bouquet' is the compact, well-behaved selection, rounding into a tidy four to six feet, which makes it the one to reach for when you want a hedge, a low screen, or a piece of evergreen structure that also happens to bloom in February. Metallic blue-black berries follow for the birds, set best when more than one plant grows nearby. They take shade, salt, and coastal wind without complaint. Few evergreens hand you this much in the dead of winter, which is precisely the season you'll be grateful for it.

Hardiness

Zones 8–10

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

5–7 ft.

Spread

4–5 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Some plants stand quietly in the garden, and some speak. Vitex agnus-castus has been speaking for more than two thousand years, from sun-washed Mediterranean shores to monastery cloisters, from the herbals of ancient Greece to the borders of Southern gardens. In Homer's day the fragrant leaves and lavender flower spikes were woven into ritual garlands. The Romans knew the shrub as the chaste tree, a name wrapped in legend, since the peppery seeds were once thought to cool passion, which earned the seeds the cloister nickname of monk's pepper. The double name says as much twice over: agnus is Latin for lamb and castus for chaste, while the genus Vitex comes from vieo, to weave, a nod to the pliant branches once bent into baskets.

Hardiness

Zones 6–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

10–20 ft.

Spread

10–20 ft.

Bloom

Purple

Plant type

Shrub

Traditional use

reproductive health, mental & emotional well-being

Vaccinium arboreum, the sparkleberry, is the giant of the blueberry clan, a large shrub or small tree native across the southeastern and south-central United States, from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas. The species name arboreum means tree-like, and an old specimen earns it, rising to twenty or twenty-five feet on a gnarled, contorted frame. The folk names sparkleberry and farkleberry both nod to the small, glossy, glinting black fruits, and the plant is sometimes called tree huckleberry or winter huckleberry for the leaves that linger late.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

10–15 ft.

Spread

10–15 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Traditional use

digestive health, topical applications

Sold as a 3-gallon plant, pick up only.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun

Height

4–5 ft.

Spread

3–4 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Sold as a 3-gallon plant, pick up only.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun

Height

6–8 ft.

Spread

6–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

A large shrub with glossy leaves. White flowers on racemes. (See HIL)

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

This evergreen creeping blueberry is a North Carolina State University selection from Lexington County, South Carolina. It has small shiny leaves but they are considerably larger than typical for the species. An excellent groundcover for moist sandy acid soil in a sunny of semi-shady location. Native to coastal Carolinas, this species is usually found where there is a high water table or seepage but where it does not flood.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Height

6–8 in.

Spread

2–3 ft.

Bloom

Various

The creeping blueberry is the ground-hugging cousin of the fruiting kinds, a low, evergreen, native groundcover of the Carolina coastal plain that trades height for reach. 'Well's Delight' is a North Carolina State University selection from the southeastern corner of that state, named for the late Dr. B.W. Wells, the pioneering North Carolina ecologist, and set apart by small, shiny leaves even finer than the usual for the species. The botanical name crassifolium means thick-leaved, for the firm little evergreen leaves that line the trailing stems.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun

Height

4–8 in.

Spread

2–3 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Groundcover

Darrow's blueberry is the silver-leaved evergreen of the group, a low, fine-textured native of the pine flatwoods and sandy scrub from southern Georgia through Florida to eastern Louisiana. The species honors George M. Darrow, the United States Department of Agriculture scientist whose breeding work built much of the modern blueberry, and the wild plant has passed its own heat tolerance into many of today's Southern highbush cultivars. 'John Blue' is a North Carolina State University selection chosen for looks as much as fruit, and the leaves are the reason.

Hardiness

Zones 8–9

Light

Full Sun

Height

2–3 ft.

Spread

2–3 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Darrow's blueberry is the fine-leaved evergreen of the Southern blueberries, a low, glaucous native of the sandy pinelands from Georgia to Florida, named for George M. Darrow, the United States Department of Agriculture scientist whose work built much of the modern blueberry. Most plants carry the usual blue-green foliage, but 'Rosa's Blush' was chosen for something showier: new growth flushed with generous pink tints that light up the shrub, a character strongest in plants from Highlands County, Florida, and noted among several clones in the North Carolina State University breeding program.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

2–3 ft.

Spread

2–3 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Darrow's blueberry is the small-leaved evergreen of the Southern blueberries, a low native of the sandy pinelands of the Deep South, named for George M. Darrow of the United States Department of Agriculture, whose breeding work shaped the modern blueberry. Most plants of the species carry blue-green foliage, but 'Sebring' is a clone Woodlanders found in Highlands County, Florida and selected for the very small, bright green leaves that give the shrub a fine, tidy texture all its own.

Hardiness

Zones 8–9

Light

Full Sun

Height

2–3 ft.

Spread

2–3 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Elliott's blueberry is one of the finest of the wild Southern blueberries, a tall, multi-stemmed deciduous native reaching up to ten feet, with slender twigs and small, glossy green leaves. The species honors Stephen Elliott, the early nineteenth-century South Carolina botanist whose Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia remains a landmark of Southern natural history. The old country name mayberry nods to the fruit, which ripens early, sometimes as soon as May in the warm South.

Hardiness

Zones 6–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

8–10 ft.

Spread

6–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Shiny blueberry is the little evergreen groundcover blueberry of the Southern Coastal Plain, a low, dense native rarely more than knee-high, spreading gently by rhizome into a fine, glossy-leaved mat. The species name myrsinites likens the small, lustrous leaves to those of myrtle, and the common name shiny blueberry says the same: the whole plant catches light on foliage barely an inch long.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

15–20 in.

Spread

15–20 in.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub