Lagerstroemia limii

Lagerstroemia limii is the crepe myrtle almost nobody grows, and that is precisely the reason to seek the plant out. Rare in gardens and known mostly to breeders and botanic collections, this Chinese species trades the familiar look of the summer crepe myrtle for something bolder and stranger: broad, blue-green leaves far larger than those of the common sort, and open, pyramidal panicles of lavender-pink bloom carried through the warm months.

The genus honors Magnus von Lagerström, the Swedish merchant who fed plants to his friend Linnaeus, and Lythraceae, the loosestrife family, is home. Elmer Merrill named this species in 1925; the epithet limii points to a collector surnamed Lim, though the person behind the name has largely slipped from the record. Native to the provinces of Fujian, Hubei, and Zhejiang, where the plant grows in low mountains and mixed forest, Lagerstroemia limii carries a coarse, furrowed bark rather than the polished, exfoliating trunk that gardeners prize in Lagerstroemia fauriei and the common crepe myrtle. The pleasures here lie in leaf and flower, not in bark.

For all the obscurity, this species has quietly shaped the crepe myrtles in many American gardens. At the United States National Arboretum, Donald Egolf drew Lagerstroemia limii into the breeding program that produced the mildew-resistant hybrids named for Native American peoples, and the plant stands in the parentage of selections such as 'Arapaho' and 'Cheyenne,' lending cold hardiness and warm, reddish-pink flower color to the line. The headline disease resistance of that famous series came mostly from Lagerstroemia fauriei, but limii earned a place at the table for toughness and bloom.

In the garden, treat this crepe myrtle as a large, multi-stemmed shrub or a small tree of fifteen to twenty-five feet, sited in full sun where the summer panicles draw bees and the big blue-green leaves make a cool foil for hotter colors nearby. The species is hardier than the common crepe myrtle, comfortable through USDA zones 7 to 9, and forgiving of heat, drought, and city air once established. For the collector who thinks there is nothing new to say about crepe myrtles, Lagerstroemia limii is a quiet and handsome argument to the contrary.