Passiflora 'Incense' is a passionflower bred for pure spectacle, an extraordinary cross between the native maypop, Passiflora incarnata, and the South American Passiflora cincinnata. The hybrid gathers the toughness of the native parent and the drama of the exotic one into a single deep-violet flower four to five inches across, the wavy corona filaments frilled and banded in purple and white, carrying a sweet, incense-like fragrance that gives the plant its name.
This rare Penstemon is a very attractive perennial with deeply cut, fern-like leaves and tall spikes of pinkish-violet flowers, each two-lipped tube carrying the yellow-bearded sterile stamen that gives the genus the name beardtongue. The dissected foliage is not merely a nice feature; it is unique in the entire genus, and no other Penstemon anywhere in the world has leaves like these. Bloom comes in late spring on stems of a foot to two, held well above a low basal clump.
Phoebe chekiangensis is one of a group of Chinese evergreens that could give the American South a whole new kind of shade tree. Upright and clean-limbed, the tree carries dense, leathery, dark green leaves much like those of the related redbay, glossy and handsome the year round, and grows at a steady pace into a small to medium tree of real presence.
This Phoebe is a broadleaf evergreen tree in the laurel family, Lauraceae, and a relative of the redbay and the avocado in the genus Persea. The genus Phoebe gathers more than fifty species of evergreen trees and shrubs across subtropical and tropical Asia, long known in China as nanmu and prized for hard, fine-textured, aromatic timber used in fine furniture and building since ancient times.
Photinia integrifolia is a handsome broadleaf evergreen, a small tree or large shrub of the rose family, widespread through the hills of southern and southeastern Asia, from the Himalayas and the Western Ghats of India east into Southeast Asia, yet virtually unknown in American gardens. A relative of the familiar Chinese photinia (Photinia serrulata), the species carries the same glossy, leathery foliage but with untoothed, entire-margined leaves, the trait behind the epithet integrifolia.
Pieris phillyreifolia, the climbing fetterbush, is one of the strangest and most wonderful of Southeastern natives, an evergreen member of the heath family with a habit unlike any other hardy shrub. In cultivation the plant grows as a neat, small evergreen shrub of two to three feet, clothed in narrow, leathery dark green leaves about an inch long.
Pithecoctenium cynanchoides, the monkey's comb, is a vigorous, tendril-climbing vine of the trumpet-creeper family, Bignoniaceae, native to the warm woodlands and thickets of South America. Semi-evergreen in mild climates, the vine climbs by many-branched tendrils and clothes a support quickly in heart-shaped, three-parted leaves, the terminal leaflet often turned into a grasping tendril of its own.
A refined and rarely offered evergreen from New Zealand, Podocarpus acutifolius forms a dense, finely textured silhouette of short, sharp-tipped leaves that give the plant a crisp, architectural presence. Heat-tolerant and well suited to the southern United States when properly sited, this uncommon conifer offers structure, restraint, and year-round depth in the landscape.
Podocarpus macrophyllus, the yew pine, is a familiar evergreen conifer grown as a shrub or small tree across the southern United States, valued for dense, dark, strap-like leaves several inches long and a tidy, upright frame. 'Okina' is the variegated form, a relatively recent introduction from Japan, whose new growth emerges creamy white before settling to soft green.
This low-growing form of Podocarpus macrophyllus is a compact, spreading evergreen with flat, needle-like leaves that spiral tightly around the stems. Where the ordinary yew pine climbs into an upright shrub or small tree, this selection stays low and horizontal, building a dense, glossy green mat of steady year-round texture and structure.
Polyspora axillaris, the fried egg tree, is a glossy, small evergreen tree or large shrub of the tea family, Theaceae, native to southern China, Taiwan, and Vietnam and still rarely cultivated in the United States. A close relative of the native loblolly bay (Gordonia lasianthus), the plant bears abundant, showy white flowers three inches across.
The procimequat is a rare and fascinating citrus hybrid, born from a botanical marriage of the Eustis limequat (itself a cross of kumquat and lime) and the Hong Kong kumquat (Fortunella hindsii). The result is a precocious, compact plant that combines the zesty lime tang of the limequat parent with the tiny, ornamental charm of the wild kumquats, all on a frame small enough for a patio pot.
Pseudolarix kaempferi, better known by the synonym Pseudolarix amabilis and the common name golden larch, is a rare, slow-growing deciduous conifer native to eastern China. Despite the name, the golden larch is not a true larch but the sole member of its own genus, Pseudolarix, prized for a graceful broad-pyramidal form, soft texture, and a brilliant golden fall color that rivals any maple or ginkgo.
The little epaulette tree is a rare small deciduous tree or large shrub from eastern Asia, and the common name is the best description anyone has managed. In late spring and early summer the branch tips hang with drooping panicles of small fragrant white flowers, and the effect really is of fringed military shoulder boards swinging from the ends of the branches. The leaves are ovate and bristle-toothed, the habit open and spreading, and the whole tree has an unforced elegance that the heavier flowering trees never quite reach.
There are pomegranates grown for fruit, and pomegranates grown for flowers, and then there is 'Eight Ball', grown for sheer astonishment. Where the species bears globes the color of garnets, Punica granatum 'Eight Ball' ripens fruit so dark, round, and dusky that the pomegranates look dipped in coal, closer to the ball the cultivar is named for than to anything in the produce aisle. The color runs bone-deep: the fruit is so loaded with anthocyanin pigment that even the cambium beneath the bark shows purple.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
8–10 ft.
Spread
6–8 ft.
Bloom
Orange
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
digestive health, heart support, general wellness, topical applications
The berries are the whole argument. Where most firethorns load their branches with orange and scarlet, this clone ripens to a clean clear yellow, abundant and unusually persistent, holding well after the red-fruited kinds have been picked over by birds. The foliage is relatively small, glossy, and evergreen, which gives the shrub a tidier and far less coarse look than the genus normally manages. Flat clusters of small white flowers cover the branches in late spring and are worked hard by bees. The thorns are entirely real and should be respected.
Pyracomeles vilmorinii is the sort of plant collectors trade knowing looks over, a small, fine-textured evergreen so uncommon that most gardeners have never met one. The little leaves are cut into narrow, fern-like divisions along arching, thornless branches, and in spring flat clusters of small white flowers give way by autumn to a scatter of coral-red fruits. The overall effect is airy and delicate, unusual in an evergreen shrub.
Pyrrosia lingua 'Kei Kan' is a fern for people who think they do not like ferns. Nothing here is lacy or feathery. The fronds are thick, leathery, and strap-shaped, and in this selection the tips fork and crest into ragged, comb-like divisions, the feature that earns the Japanese name Kei Kan, meaning cockscomb. The overall effect is closer to a piece of green leather sculpture than to the soft filigree most people picture when they hear the word fern.
Quercus acerifolia is one of the rarest oaks in North America, and one of the most quietly beautiful. The name says the first thing you notice: acerifolia means maple-leaved, and the upper leaves really do look like a sugar maple's, often as wide as they are long, cut into three to five sharp, glossy lobes that turn deep red and burgundy in fall. A close relative of the Shumard oak, maple-leaf oak grows as anything from a stunted, multi-trunked shrub on a windswept ridge to a single-trunked tree of forty or fifty feet in cultivation.
Quercus arizonica is the heavy, pale-barked white oak of the Madrean Sky Islands, the ranges that lift out of the desert in southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, west Texas, and northern Mexico. Growth is slow and the frame is broad: stout limbs, an irregularly spreading crown, and in time a trunk three feet through on a tree capable of sixty feet where the site allows, though garden specimens usually settle nearer thirty. The leaves give the species away, thick and stiff as harness leather, blue-green above and conspicuously pale and felted beneath, holding through most winters and dropping only as new growth pushes in spring. Old bark goes ashy white and deeply furrowed, which is where the common name comes from.
