Phoebe cavaleriei (Nothaphoebe cavaleriei)

Phoebe cavaleriei is a broadleaved evergreen of the laurel family, and one of the handsomest of them. The leaves are leathery, four to seven inches long, oblanceolate to obovate, deep glossy green above and a pale greenish white beneath, so the whole canopy changes color as the wind turns the foliage over. Crushed, the leaves give off a pleasant spicy scent, which is the family signature and the reason bay, cinnamon, and sassafras all count as cousins. The bark is reddish brown with fine longitudinal striations while the young branches stay green. Flowers come between May and July, yellow to yellowish white and barely an eighth of an inch long, followed by round fruits about half an inch across seated in persistent tepals. Nobody grows this tree for the flowers.

The name has been through the mill. The species was described by the French botanist Hector Léveillé from material collected in Guizhou by Julien Cavalerie, a missionary whose name is attached to a long list of Chinese plants, and was transferred to Nothaphoebe by Yen C. Yang in 1945. That is the name under which the tree entered western cultivation and the name most nurseries still use, misspelled along the way as Notophoebe or Nothophoebe about as often as not. Plants of the World Online now returns the species to Phoebe as Phoebe cavaleriei. We list the accepted name with the familiar trade name alongside, so the tree can be found under either.

Phoebe is a genus of Chinese and southeast Asian evergreens best known for nanmu, the fragrant, close-grained timber reserved for imperial halls and coffins under the Ming and Qing, and several members of the genus are endangered today for exactly that reputation. Phoebe cavaleriei is not one of the great timber trees. This is a modest tree of montane forest margins in Sichuan, northeastern Yunnan, and Guizhou, between roughly sixteen hundred and six thousand feet, scarce in cultivation anywhere and scarcer still in American gardens.

Zone 9, or the warmest part of zone 8, suits best. Late unripened growth tends to freeze back here in Aiken, which is the usual price of a fast-growing evergreen at the cold edge of the range, and the plant comes back. A specimen at Hopelands Gardens, a few minutes from the nursery, now stands over thirty-five feet, which says more than any hardiness table. Plant on good, well-drained soil in sun or semi-shade, sheltered from the worst winter wind, and expect twenty-five to forty-five feet in time.

Our propagation stock was taken as cuttings on the Armstrong Campus in Savannah, Georgia, in August of 2026.