Titi is a plant of the Southeastern flatwoods and blackwater swamps, and the regional beekeeper knows the shrub better than the gardener does. White racemes come in early summer, after most shrubs have finished, dense and drooping in a collar around the stem, and the bees work them hard. One honest caution belongs with that. The nectar of Cyrilla racemiflora is the long-suspected cause of purple brood, the summer larval poisoning Gulf Coast beekeepers have known since the 1930s, and the titi honey sold along the coastal plain comes mostly from black titi, Cliftonia monophylla, which flowers months earlier. Plant the shrub for the bloom, the fall color, and the birds, rather than for the hive.

Cyrilla racemiflora takes wet ground, acid soil, and standing water, which makes the shrub a straightforward answer for a pond edge, a swale, or the low corner of a lot. The plant is far more adaptable than the swamp habitat suggests, and will grow in ordinary garden soil given steady moisture. Fall turns the semi-evergreen foliage orange and scarlet, and the spent flower stalks persist through winter. The small-leaved forms, sometimes listed as Cyrilla parvifolia, stay tighter and denser. Little known outside the region, and worth a great deal more attention than the plants get.