A miniature of the lady fern, Athyrium filix-femina 'Minutissimum' keeps every bit of the species' lacy grace at a fraction of the size, building a dense little tuft of delicate, light green fronds just eight to ten inches high. The fine texture and small scale make this dwarf fern a jewel for the front of a shaded bed.
Carex conica 'Marginata' is a miniature evergreen sedge, a tidy, tufted, grass-like clump of narrow dark green blades, each finely edged in silver-white. At close range the effect is crisp and jewel-like, a low cushion of fine texture that holds color and form the year round in mild winters.
Carex morrowii is a tough, clump-forming Japanese sedge grown for deep, glossy, evergreen foliage, a low fountain of arching dark green blades that holds color and form through the year in mild winters. The plain green species is the quiet backbone behind the many variegated selections, and a fine foliage plant in its own right.
Carex morrowii 'Variegata' is the popular silver-edged form of the Japanese sedge, a tufted, grass-like clump of narrow blades to about a foot long, each margined crisply in silvery white. The variegation brightens a shaded planting where plain greens recede, and the evergreen foliage holds the effect through the year in mild winters.
Rusty Lyonia is a tall evergreen shrub often becoming tree-like with contorted branches. New leaves are rusty red. Flowers are small fragrant white bells. Plant in sunny or lightly shaded site with sandy acid soil and good drainage. This species is native to sandy pinelands and sand scrub from lower South Carolina through Florida.
A medium-sized evergreen shrub still little known in cultivation, Adina pilulifera carries small, glossy leaves and, in midsummer, round white flower heads about an inch across, each bristling with protruding styles like a tiny Sputnik. The effect is curious and charming, a pincushion of white set among shining foliage, and the evergreen habit earns the shrub a place where the deciduous buttonbushes leave a winter gap.
Actinidia latifolia is a little-known kiwi relative, a vigorous, high-climbing deciduous vine from the warm forests of southern and southeastern China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The broad leaves, four to five inches long and roughly two wide, carry an unusual metallic sheen that catches the light, and twining stems can climb to twenty feet or more given room and a sturdy support.
White baneberry earns the better-known name doll's eyes from the fruit: in late summer each white, pea-sized berry carries a single dark stigma scar, set on a thickened, coral-red stalk, so a whole cluster seems to stare back. A clump-forming native perennial of rich eastern woodlands, Actaea pachypoda opens fluffy white racemes above divided foliage in late spring, then trades flowers for that startling, long-lasting fruit display.
Hardiness
Zones 3–7
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
1–3 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
pain relief, respiratory support, reproductive health
Aconitum uncinatum, the southern blue monkshood, is an uncommon and long-lived native of the eastern United States, scattered through the Appalachians and Piedmont in rich, moist woods, along streambanks, and in cool seeps. The slender stems ascend and lean, sometimes weakly climbing to several feet, carrying lobed leaves and, in late summer into fall, terminal racemes of medium blue, hooded flowers held on long stalks. The cowl-shaped upper sepal gives the monkshoods their name, and few native wildflowers match this clean, late-season blue.
The genus Aconitum runs to well over a hundred species, the monkshoods and wolfsbanes, named for the hooded upper sepal that arches over each flower like a cowl. These plants were grown from seed collected by Frank Bell in Yunnan, China, and remain, as yet, indistinguishable from the other species Woodlanders lists; the true name waits on a flowering season and a careful eye. What can be said is that this is a Chinese monkshood, a clump-forming perennial of cool mountain ground, carrying the family's hooded, typically blue to violet flowers on upright stems in summer.
Acer truncatum, the Shantung or Purpleblow maple, is a tough, tidy small tree from northern China and Korea, where the straight base of the leaf, truncate rather than heart-shaped, hands the species a botanical name. Glossy leaves emerge with a reddish purple flush in spring, mature to deep green, and close the year in shades of yellow, orange, red, and sometimes purple. Clusters of bright yellow flowers open with the new leaves in May, an uncommon sight among maples and one reason gardeners seek the tree out.
Acer oliverianum, the Oliver maple, carries the look of a Japanese maple on a tougher frame. Named for Daniel Oliver, the Victorian Kew botanist, this small Chinese and Taiwanese tree wears smooth jade green bark finely lined with white, and palmate, five-lobed leaves so like Acer palmatum that the two are easily confused. The difference shows in the constitution: the Oliver maple takes more heat and more drought than the Japanese maples, a welcome trait for warmer gardens that long for that filigree foliage.
Among the snakebark maples, Acer micranthum ranks with the most delicate, a small, sometimes shrubby tree from the mountains of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku, where the Japanese know the plant as the Komine maple. The species has no settled English name, and that quiet anonymity suits a tree grown for refinement rather than show. James Harris, in The Gardener's Guide to Growing Maples, calls this "a very elegant maple with attractive autumn tints," and Bluebell Nursery in Britain describes "a rare and sought after species ... a very striking garden plant with a lovely habit and an excellent choice for glorious autumn color," adding that established specimens carry eye-catching bark.
Acer coriaceifolium is a very rare evergreen maple, and few people would recognize the plant as a maple at all: the leaves are leathery and entire, broadly oval to lanceolate, dark and glossy above, pale and felted beneath, with none of the lobing the genus is known for. Sometimes listed as Acer cinnamomifolium, this maple is native to the mountain forests of southern and central China, where the species grows as a small tree at middle elevations.
Acer cissifolium is one of the trifoliate maples, a small deciduous tree whose leaves, divided into three coarsely toothed leaflets, look more like those of an ivy or a vine than of a maple, hence the common names ivy-leaved and vine-leaved maple. The species is native to the cool mountain forests of Japan, where these trees grow into an upright oval that broadens with age to a wide, rounded crown. Michael Dirr called the plant "extremely rare in cultivation but certainly worthy of consideration," and that judgment still holds.
Acer buergeranum, the trident maple, is named for the neat three-lobed leaves, small and glossy, that point forward like the tines of a fork. This is a small, slow to moderate deciduous tree of eastern China, Korea, and Japan, long held in cultivation across East Asia and carried into Western gardens in the nineteenth century. Few maples wear age so gracefully: the bark exfoliates in gray, orange, and brown plates, revealing a warm inner bark that becomes one of the tree's quiet pleasures in winter.
Acanthus mollis is one of the great architectural plants of the garden, a clump-forming perennial whose large, glossy, deeply cut leaves are among the most recognizable of all foliage. They are, quite literally, the leaves of antiquity: their form was carved into the capitals of Corinthian columns by Greek and Roman builders, and the legend, told by Vitruvius, holds that the sculptor Callimachus took his inspiration from a clump of acanthus growing up around a basket left on a girl's grave. Few plants carry their history so plainly in their shape.
Acalypha pendula is a trailing, mat-forming little shrub grown for its curious flowers: soft, fuzzy, crimson catkins, three to four inches long, that hang like miniature chenille tails or a cat's tail among small green leaves. It is a dwarf cousin of the familiar chenille plant, and is sold under the common names dwarf chenille, firetail, and strawberry firetails.
Acacia visco, now placed by botanists in the genus Parasenegalia, is a graceful, fast-growing tree from the high country of northern Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru, where it is known simply as visco or viscote. The name nods to the sticky, resinous sap the tree exudes. Unusually among its thorny relatives it is thornless, with a light, open crown of ferny, twice-divided leaves that cast a dappled, forgiving shade.
