Hypericum myrtifolium

Hypericum myrtifolium is the tidy, blue-leaved member of the group, an evergreen shrub whose small, leathery leaves clasp the stems in neat overlapping ranks and carry a soft glaucous, blue-green cast. In summer the bushy little frame fills with bright yellow flowers, each one a shallow cup brimming with stamens, the show carried on a plant that looks more like a miniature tree than a scrambling subshrub.

The epithet myrtifolium means myrtle-leaved, for foliage that recalls the true myrtle, blue-green, close-set, and evergreen. Above that description sits the old genus name Hypericum, from the Greek hyper and eikon, above and image, a memory of the Midsummer custom of hanging flowering St. John's Wort above doorways and holy pictures at the feast of Saint John to turn away harm.

In the wild the myrtleleaf St. John's Wort belongs to the Southeastern Coastal Plain, ranging from southeastern South Carolina south into peninsular Florida and west to Mississippi. The shrub grows in sandy, seasonally wet pinelands and along the damp edges of ponds and depressions, a plant at home where the ground is both sandy and moist, conditions that would trouble many woody plants.

Another of the southern native Hypericums that Woodlanders was probably the first to bring to the gardening public, myrtleleaf St. John's Wort makes a fine, well-behaved garden shrub for a sunny spot in the South. The blue-green evergreen foliage holds interest all year, and the summer gold reads cleanly against the blue-green. Use the shrub as a low informal hedge, a rain garden accent, or a foundation filler, with sweetbay, wax myrtle, and native sedges for company in damp, sandy ground.