Plants that turn their faces to the light. This is the roll call for the open, sun-struck parts of the garden, the borders and banks that bake from morning to evening, where the toughest, brightest, most floriferous plants do their best work.
The bayberry candle is one of those traditions so old it has become purely symbolic, burned at Christmas for luck, the scent faint and slightly waxy and unlike anything paraffin has managed to replicate in three centuries of trying. Most people who burn one have no idea what plant produced it, or that the plant is still out there, growing in sandy pocosins and coastal flats from New Jersey to the Gulf, doing quiet work in the margins of the southeastern landscape. That plant is Morella caroliniensis.
Morella pumila 'Willow Leaf' is a distinctive, fine-leaved form of the native dwarf waxmyrtle, selected for narrow, elongated, willow-like leaves that give the low shrub an unusually elegant, airy texture rarely seen in the species. Like the wild plant, this is a low, spreading, colony-forming evergreen of the fire-adapted pinelands of the southeastern United States, once listed as Myrica pusilla and now placed in the genus Morella.
Southern wax myrtle is one of the hardest-working native evergreens of the Southeast, and 'Emperor' is a nursery selection of that adaptable shrub. Fast-growing and densely branched, wax myrtle forms a large evergreen shrub or a small multi-trunked tree, clothed in narrow, olive-green leaves that release a clean, spicy, bayberry scent when crushed. The plant thrives where many shrubs fail, from wet ground to dry sand, in sun or shade, on the coast or inland.
Myrtus communis, the true myrtle, is a dense evergreen shrub of the Mediterranean, clothed in small, glossy, aromatic leaves and starry white flowers, and few garden plants carry so much history. Sacred to Aphrodite and to her Roman counterpart Venus, myrtle has stood for love, beauty, and marriage since antiquity, woven into bridal wreaths from ancient Greece to Victorian England, and a sprig from Queen Victoria's own bouquet founded a myrtle whose descendants still supply royal wedding flowers today.
Hardiness
Zones 8–11
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
6–9 ft.
Spread
6–8 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, topical applications, digestive health
The Nagami kumquat is the easiest citrus most gardeners will ever grow, and the only one meant to be eaten peel and all. Clusters of small, oval, sunset-orange fruit hang against dense, glossy evergreen foliage, each one a burst of contrast: a sweet, tender rind wrapped around bright, tart pulp. Pop them whole for a sweet-and-sour snap, candy the rinds, slice them into a salad, or simmer the winter harvest into jewel-toned marmalade.
Oleander, Nerium oleander, is a large, sun-loving evergreen shrub of the Mediterranean, grown since antiquity for a long, generous summer of bloom. Dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves ride in whorls of three along the long, sparingly branched stems, and from late spring well into fall the branch tips carry showy, lightly fragrant flower clusters. 'Double Pink' bears fully double, rose-like flowers in a soft, warm pink.
The hardiest yellow oleander in cultivation, and one of the very few oleanders that come in yellow at all. Of the four hundred and more named cultivars of Nerium oleander, the genus runs naturally to white, pink, and red; yellow is the aberration, and a fully double yellow rarer still. 'Double Yellow' is the old French selection that fixed the color.
Oleander, Nerium oleander, is the great sun-loving evergreen of the Mediterranean, grown since antiquity for a long summer of bloom, with dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves in whorls of three along long, sparingly branched stems. 'Hardy Red' is one of the cold-tougher selections, carrying showy, lightly fragrant clusters of bright red flowers from late spring well into fall.
Few shrubs carry as much history as the oleander, grown around the Mediterranean and across the warm world since antiquity. The name Nerium traces to the Greek neros, meaning moist or watery, a nod to the streamsides and dry watercourses where oleander naturally takes hold, while the old name oleander seems to braid together olea, the olive, and the leathery, lance-shaped leaves the two plants share. Those dark green leaves stand in tidy whorls of three along long, sparingly branched stems, giving the shrub a poised, upright architecture even out of flower.
Nerium oleander has been grown around the Mediterranean since antiquity, the name Nerium drawn from the Greek neros, watery, for the streamsides where the shrub grows wild. 'Variegata' brings that ancient toughness together with luminous foliage: narrow, leathery leaves edged in creamy white around a deep green center, held in whorls along the stems so the whole shrub seems lightly frosted even when out of flower.
Nerium oleander is among the oldest shrubs in cultivation, grown around the Mediterranean since antiquity and named from the Greek neros, watery, for the streamsides and washes where oleander grows wild. The dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves sit in tidy whorls of three along long, sparingly branched stems, lending the shrub a clean, upright presence in every season.
Devilwood earns the odd name honestly. Osmanthus americanus carries a wood so cross-grained and stubborn that early woodworkers swore the timber was possessed, and the name has stuck for centuries, a small piece of American folklore hung on an otherwise gracious plant. The leaves are leathery, elliptical, and smooth-margined, a deep glossy green without the spines that arm so many tea olives, and they build into a dense, rounded evergreen of fifteen to twenty-five feet, handsome as screen, understory, or small tree.
Some plants are grown for the eye and some for the nose, and sweet osmanthus belongs wholly to the second camp. The very name tells the story: Osmanthus joins the Greek osme, a scent, with anthos, a flower, and fragrans doubles down, so the botanical name reads almost as fragrant fragrant-flower. The blooms themselves are tiny, waxy, and creamy white, tucked so far back among the leaves that a passerby often smells the plant long before finding the flowers, a warm apricot-and-honey perfume that carries across a whole garden on a mild autumn day.
For all the sweet osmanthus grown across the South, most carry the same tiny white flowers, so 'Conger Yellow' arrives as a quiet surprise: a clone bearing clusters of soft, butter-yellow blooms against notably large, glossy leaves. The flowers keep the family gift, that warm apricot-and-honey perfume that drifts on autumn air and, in mild climates, returns in scattered flushes through much of the year, strongest as evening cools.
'Fudingzhu' turns the usual tea olive up a notch. Where most sweet osmanthus scatter a modest few flowers among the leaves, this selection smothers itself in dense, bead-like clusters of small, creamy-white blooms, so freely and for so long that the name is said to mean pearls upon the Buddha's head, for the way the pale flowers crown the plant. The scent is the pure osmanthus perfume, a rich sweetness of ripe apricot and peach that carries on the evening air.
The orange sweet olive is the tea olive at full volume. Where the common form carries tiny white flowers, Osmanthus fragrans f. aurantiacus bears clusters of deep yellow to burnt orange, and the color comes with an even richer scent, a heady sweetness of ripe apricot and peach that fills a garden on a still autumn afternoon. The blooms open in one great, concentrated flush, brief at perhaps a week or two, but so heavy that the whole plant seems to smoke with fragrance while it lasts.
Grown for the leaf rather than the flower, 'Goshiki' is the most colorful of the holly osmanthus. The name means five colors in Japanese, and the spiny, holly-like evergreen leaves earn it: flecked and mottled with cream and yellow against dark green, and flushed at every new growth with startling pink and orange that slowly settles to gold and green. The species name heterophyllus, from the Greek for different-leaved, fits the whole clan, whose juvenile leaves bristle with holly teeth while older ones smooth to entire margins.
'Gulftide' is the tea olive to reach for when you want the fragrance of the genus and the toughness to carry it through a cold winter. A dense, upright evergreen with glossy, dark green, spiny holly-like leaves, this selection covers itself in tiny waxy white flowers in autumn, and the scent they throw is out of all proportion to the size of the bloom, sweet and carrying, one of the real pleasures of the fall garden.
Among the false hollies, 'Rotundifolius' is the gentle contrarian. Where the species arms the youthful leaves with fierce holly spines, this old form lays them down entirely: the leaves are small, thick, and rounded, nearly circular and spineless, a heavy, puckered dark green that reads more like boxwood or a miniature bergenia than an osmanthus. The oddity is the whole appeal, a curiosity that stops a plantsman mid-path.
'Sasaba' is the holly osmanthus taken to a theatrical extreme, grown less for flower than for the sheer drama of the leaf. Each dark, glossy, evergreen leaf is cut and incised into narrow, spine-tipped lobes that jut out in every direction, so that the whole shrub reads as a slow green explosion. The Japanese name says it well: sasaba means bamboo leaf, for the narrow, divided foliage.
