Cyrilla racemiflora 'Graniteville'

'Graniteville' is a low, ground-hugging selection of Cyrilla racemiflora, the native Titi, and one of the more distinctive forms of a plant already known for variability. Where the species can build into a small tree, this Woodlanders introduction stays wide and knee-high, and the story behind the plant is a piece of local botanizing: we propagated 'Graniteville' from an almost prostrate individual found years ago on an eroded sandhills seepage slope near Graniteville, South Carolina, and the ground-hugging habit has held true ever since in cultivation.

Titi itself is a wetland native of remarkable range, spread across the southeastern coastal plain from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas, at home in the wet, acid ground along swamps and blackwater streams. The genus honors the Neapolitan botanist Domenico Cirillo, and the country names, leatherwood and burnwood bark among them, nod to the tough, spongy bark and twisted stems that flake in cinnamon tones on older wood. 'Graniteville' carries all of that heritage in a frame built to spread rather than climb.

In summer the selection bears the same slender racemes of tiny, fragrant white flowers that make Titi such a generous nectar plant, alive with bees, followed in fall by glossy foliage that colors warm orange and red where winters turn cool. Four to five feet tall at most but spreading eight to ten, 'Graniteville' reads as a fine-textured mound that spills over a slope or a low wall rather than a shrub that stands upright.

That habit is the whole point in the garden. Use 'Graniteville' where a low, wide Titi can pour: down a sunny bank, over a retaining wall, along a pond edge, or massed as a tall, fine-textured groundcover in damp ground. Give the plant room to spread, enjoy the summer bloom and pollinator traffic up close, and keep good company with clethra, itea, and native ferns. As with the species, and because Woodlanders ships nationwide, expect semi-evergreen foliage in the Deep South and a more deciduous, warmly coloring habit toward the northern end of the range.