{"product_id":"lindera-strychnifolia","title":"Lindera strychnifolia","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis quietly handsome evergreen has grown well for years in the Woodlanders garden here in Aiken, South Carolina, holding a place in semi-shade where many broadleaf evergreens sulk. The spicebush earns a spot on foliage alone: glossy, leathery leaves, roughly heart-shaped and about three inches across, each marked by three bold veins, with new growth flushing a soft bronze before deepening to green.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLindera strychnifolia belongs to Lauraceae, the aromatic laurel family, in the company of cinnamon, sassafras, bay laurel, and the American spicebush, and every part of the plant carries that family's spicy scent. Botanists now file the species as Lindera aggregata, keeping strychnifolia as a synonym; the old epithet means simply Strychnos-leaved, a nod to the shape of the foliage and not, despite the sound of the word, any hint of strychnine. Small greenish-yellow flowers gather in early-spring umbels along the branches, modest rather than showy, and where male and female plants grow together the females ripen small drupes that darken from red to black.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn China the plant answers to another name entirely, wu yao, and there the real fame lies underground. The tuberous root has been a staple of traditional Chinese medicine since the Song dynasty, with the finest material long associated with the Tiantai hills of Zhejiang, so prized that the best grade still travels under the name Tiantai wu yao. Classed among the herbs that regulate qi, the root was used to warm the body's core and ease cold-natured pains of the belly and lower abdomen.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor all that medicinal weight, in an American garden Lindera strychnifolia is simply an excellent, uncommon broadleaf evergreen, still rare in the trade and passed mostly through arboreta and specialist growers. Set the shrub in part shade to shade, in moist, lime-free soil enriched with leaf mold, and site the plant so low light can catch the pale undersides of the leaves. Reaching six to ten feet, the spicebush makes a glossy anchor for a woodland edge or a shaded border, aromatic in the hand and evergreen through the Southern winter.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057912254579,"sku":"LIND-STRY-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Linderastrychnifolia.webp?v=1784327079","url":"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/products\/lindera-strychnifolia","provider":"Woodlanders","version":"1.0","type":"link"}