Leucothoe populifolia

Leucothoe populifolia, still fondly called Agarista populifolia by those who knew the plant before the name changed, is the giant of a genus otherwise built low to the ground. Where most leucothoes hug the shade at knee height, this one climbs, sending up tall, erect stems that arch at the tips into a fountain of glossy evergreen leaves, and given years and room the shrub can pass for a small multi-stemmed tree of twelve to fifteen feet.

In spring the arching branches hang with small, creamy-white, bell-shaped flowers, sweetly fragrant and shaped like the blossoms of a blueberry or a lily of the valley, a family resemblance that is no accident, since Leucothoe belongs to the heath family, Ericaceae, in company with blueberries, azaleas, and mountain laurel. The genus carries an old Greek myth in the name: Leucothoe was a princess loved by the sun god Apollo and, in the telling, transformed into a fragrant shrub. The epithet populifolia simply means poplar-leaved, a nod to the broad, tapering foliage.

The species is a Southeastern native with an oddly punctuated range, growing wild in the low country of southeastern South Carolina and down through Florida, yet somehow skipping Georgia in between. Gardeners well north of that native ground grow the plant happily, prizing the year-round screen of dark, polished leaves and the flush of coppery bronze on the new growth. As with other members of the heath family, every part carries grayanotoxins and is not for eating, which is also why deer tend to leave the foliage alone.

Site Leucothoe populifolia where a tall evergreen is wanted but a stiff wall of conifer would feel wrong: as a soft screen along a property line, a backdrop to a shade border, or a graceful anchor at the edge of woodland. The plant asks for the conditions of the native swamp margins, meaning moist, acid, humus-rich soil that still drains, and the dappled light of high shade. Underplant with ferns, hostas, and native azaleas, or let the arching stems rise behind hydrangeas for a layered, woodland-edge planting that keeps its good looks straight through winter.