Lithocarpus edulis 'Variegata'

A broadleaf evergreen with a story, this variegated tanbark oak came into the country from Japan through the late Dr. Fred Meyer of the United States National Arboretum, a botanist and tireless plant explorer, and was almost certainly first offered to American gardeners by Woodlanders. The draw is the foliage: dense, leathery, glossy leaves, each dark green blade split by an irregular central streak of gold and cream, so that a whole tree seems lit from within. Plant Delights later distributed the same selection under the name 'Starburst,' and both names point to this one bright-leaved plant.

Lithocarpus is the genus of stone oaks, or tanbark oaks, close kin to the true oaks in Fagaceae but set apart by stiff, upright flower spikes rather than the dangling catkins of Quercus, and by acorns so hard-shelled they gave the genus its name, from the Greek for stone fruit. The species epithet, edulis, means edible, and records a genuine use: in Japan the acorns of this tree, mateba-shii, have long been gathered for food, roasted and ground after leaching away the tannins that make so many acorns bitter. The bark, like that of the other tanbark oaks, once fed the leather-tanning trade with its tannins.

Left to grow, Lithocarpus edulis makes a rounded evergreen tree of twenty-five to thirty-five feet, slow and deliberate in youth and dense with age, bearing creamy upright flower spikes in early summer and, in autumn, the hard little acorns. The variegated form is grown for leaf rather than crop, but a mature specimen still flowers and fruits. Hardy through USDA zones 7 to 9 and tolerant of coastal wind and city air, the tree serves as a luminous evergreen screen, a specimen to light a shaded corner, or a slow-building anchor where a gardener wants substance that holds all winter.

There is an old-fashioned generosity to a tree like this, an evergreen that feeds wildlife, once fed people, and carries a variegation striking enough to stop a visitor mid-path. Give the tanbark oak deep, well-drained soil and an open spot with room to spread, full sun to part shade, and a little shelter while young. Growers report that deer leave the foliage alone, one more argument for a plant that asks little and offers a great deal, including a direct link to the exploring botanists who once carried such things home.