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.
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.
Osmanthus x fortunei 'Natchez' is a hybrid that takes the best of two parents. The cross joins Osmanthus fragrans, the sweet olive treasured for its perfume, with Osmanthus heterophyllus, the false holly valued for tough, spiny, evergreen foliage, and 'Natchez' inherits both gifts: a dense, glossy, holly-leaved frame and a flood of fragrance in fall. The hybrid takes the name of the old river town of Natchez, Mississippi, a nod to the Deep South gardens where these tea olives have long been at home.
Osmanthus x fortunei 'San Jose' is a large, upright member of Fortune's tea olive, the garden hybrid that crosses the false holly, Osmanthus heterophyllus, with the sweet olive, Osmanthus fragrans. Among the fortunei clones, 'San Jose' stands apart for thinner, more finely toothed leaves and a taller, more upright habit, a plant that reaches for height where others spread.
Osteomeles schweriniae, the bone apple, is a refined evergreen shrub in the rose family, close kin to hawthorn, cotoneaster, and photinia, and a botanical rarity seldom seen in American gardens. The genus name joins the Greek osteon, bone, and melon, apple, a nod to the stony hardness of the little fruits, while the species epithet honors the German dendrologist Count Fritz von Schwerin. Native to the dry valleys and open slopes of Yunnan and western Sichuan in southwestern China, the shrub carries very small, ferny, pinnate leaves along dense, wiry, arching stems, giving a fine texture unusual among broadleaf evergreens.
Oxydendrum arboreum, the sourwood, is one of the loveliest and most distinctive trees of the Eastern American woods, and among the very last to flower each year. The name tells the story twice over: Oxydendrum joins the Greek oxys, sour or sharp, and dendron, tree, while the common name echoes the same tang, for the leaves, twigs, and bark all taste sourly of oxalic acid when chewed. A member of the heath family alongside azaleas, rhododendrons, and blueberries, sourwood stands alone as the sole species in the genus, native to well-drained, acid woodland soils from southern Pennsylvania to the Florida panhandle and west toward Louisiana, most abundant in the lower Appalachians.
Hardiness
Zones 5–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
30–50 ft.
Spread
15–25 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
digestive health, respiratory support, general wellness
Few native plants look as improbable as the maypop. Passiflora incarnata, the wild passionflower of the American Southeast, opens intricate three-inch flowers of pale lavender and white, each ringed with a fringed corona of wavy filaments above a central column of stamens and styles. Spanish missionaries read the whole Passion of Christ into that structure, the corona for the crown of thorns, the five anthers for the wounds, the three styles for the nails, and gave the genus its devotional name. Common along field edges and roadsides from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas, the vine climbs by curling tendrils or sprawls across open ground.
Hardiness
Zones 7–10
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
10–25 ft.
Spread
6–10 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Vine
Traditional use
mental & emotional well-being, digestive health, reproductive health
Passiflora incarnata alba is the rare pure white form of the native maypop, the wild passionflower of the American Southeast. The flower keeps all the improbable structure of the species, an intricate three-inch bloom with a fringed corona above a central column of stamens and styles, but drained of every trace of lavender: white petals, white sepals, and a white corona, luminous and cool against the deep green foliage. The effect is a ghostly, refined version of a familiar roadside wildflower.
Hardiness
Zones 7–10
Light
Full Sun
Height
6–15 ft.
Spread
3–6 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Vine
Traditional use
mental & emotional well-being, digestive health, reproductive health
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.
Passiflora 'Amethyst' is one of the most rewarding of the ornamental passionflowers, a vigorous hybrid grown for large, jewel-toned blooms of glowing red-purple. Each flower opens nearly flat, three to four inches across, the petals and sepals reflexing back to set off a short, banded corona and a lifted central column of stamens and styles. The parentage is somewhat uncertain, as with many old garden passionflowers, but the effect is unmistakable: an amethyst star held out along the vine.
Patrinia scabiosifolia 'Nagoya' is a tough, upright perennial from the meadows and grassy hills of East Asia, grown for airy, flat-topped heads of tiny golden-yellow flowers held high on wiry, branching stems. The species name scabiosifolia points to the deeply lobed basal leaves, which recall those of a scabious, and the whole plant reads as a chartreuse-gold answer to Queen Anne's lace, lending height and a see-through veil to a summer border. In Japan the species is one of the classic seven flowers of autumn, and 'Nagoya' is a garden selection prized for reliable, compact performance.
Small's beardtongue is one of the showiest and most obliging of the eastern native penstemons, a Southern Appalachian wildflower that carries tall spires of lavender-pink to rosy-purple tubular flowers in late spring and holds them for weeks. Each bloom is pale-throated and finely striped inside, a landing-strip for the bumblebees that work the flowers, and the whole plant rises from a handsome rosette of purple-veined foliage on reddish stems.
'Shortwood' is one of the best of the tall garden phloxes, a strong pink that stands up straight and blooms for weeks in the heart of summer. Each large, domed panicle is packed with fragrant flowers, clear rose-pink around a deeper magenta eye, and the whole plant reads from across the garden, four feet of upright color that never seems to flop.
Phlox pilosa, the downy or prairie phlox, is a native of open woods, prairies, and glades across much of the eastern and central United States, and 'Eco Happy Traveler' is one of the most rewarding garden selections, made for a spreading habit and a long run of clear rose-pink bloom. The soft, downy stems and narrow leaves give the plant the common name, and the whole low mat is topped in late spring by loose clusters of fragrant, five-petaled flowers.
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.
Physostegia virginiana, the obedient plant, is a familiar native of moist meadows and streamsides across eastern North America, and 'Vivid' is the compact, richly colored selection that has become a garden standard. Upright spikes of deep rose-pink, tubular flowers rise on square, mint-family stems in mid to late summer, holding strong color into early fall when much of the border is fading.
Piloblephis rigida, wild or Florida pennyroyal, is a compact evergreen native mint from the sandy scrublands and pine flatwoods of Florida. The plant forms a low, tidy mound of fine, needle-like foliage that carries a clean, resinous, minty fragrance, released at a brush of the hand or on a warm afternoon in the sun.
Hardiness
Zones 8–10
Light
Full Sun
Height
1–2 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, topical applications, general wellness
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.
