Hypericum lissophloeus

Hypericum lissophloeus is the tree among the St. John's Worts, a graceful evergreen that climbs to ten feet or more on slender trunks dressed in smooth, copper-colored bark that peels in thin sheets. The leaves are needle-fine and deep green, so that from a distance the plant reads almost like a small conifer until summer, when small bright yellow flowers scatter along the stems and settle the question of family.

The epithet lissophloeus is a plain description in Greek: lissos, smooth, and phloios, bark, for the polished trunks that set this species apart from every rough-barked relative. The genus name Hypericum is older and stranger, from hyper and eikon, above and image, a relic of the Midsummer custom of hanging flowering St. John's Wort above doorways and holy pictures to ward off evil at the feast of Saint John. Smooth-barked St. John's Wort wears the family name but makes the bark, not the bloom, the memorable thing.

The wild range is heartbreakingly small. Hypericum lissophloeus grows only in Bay and Washington Counties on the Florida Panhandle, on the sandy slopes and margins of sinkhole ponds set in xeric uplands. The water there rises and falls dramatically across the year, from drought that leaves the roots high and dry to seasonal flooding that can stand four feet deep, and the plant is built to ride out both extremes. Listed as endangered in Florida, the species is one of many rare southeastern natives that Woodlanders was probably the first nursery to offer.

In the garden smooth-barked St. John's Wort makes an elegant, upright specimen for a sunny, well-drained sandy site, and thrives on the same fluctuating moisture found at a pond edge or a rain garden that floods and then dries. The one real requirement is room: the plant resents crowding, so keep the base free of competing vegetation and let the fine evergreen texture and copper trunks stand clear. Set the shrub where low winter light can catch the bark, with wiregrass, native azaleas, and other sandhill companions at a respectful distance. Additional photos courtesy of Shirley Denton.