For example, I enjoy compact Asian species of beautyberry (Callicarpa) as much as our taller, gangly native. Instead of ours’ golf ball-size clusters of purple berries, the Chinese beautyberry has smaller, delicate rows of fruit clusters, just as showy, but more manageable. And our butterflies and birds love it just as well as the native.
There are other examples of closely-related plants that are found only in the Southeast US and to eastern Asia, with similar genes and garden suitability. Some of my favorites native exclusively to both continents include magnolia, sweetshrub (Calycanthus), dogwood, hydrangea, maple, pitcher plant, iris, lilies, asters, hollies, wisteria, palms, and maidenhair fern. And dozens of others. Azaleas, too, though theirs are evergreen, our are deciduous.
The facts behind why they are so similar, though completely separated by oceans, mountains, and deserts for thousands of years, are fascinating in themselves.
What we call terra firma is a huge, floating crust that every now and again breaks apart, drifts around, and bangs back together. At one time a big hunk of it was one supercontinent called Pangea (from root words meaning “whole” and “land”). The latest breakup is pretty obvious when you look at how Africa could easily spoon into the curves of North and South America.
And over eons, because of mountain upheavals, glaciers scraping things clean, and changes in weather patterns that turned rainforests into deserts and vice versa, plant communities that were once connected by Beringia (now the mostly-submerged Bering Straits), got separated, and independently adjusted to their new conditions, or disappeared.
However, the climates of Mississippi and central China remain pretty similar, and support close-kin relics of once widespread flora.
So, plants that go around come back around. We once again have dawn redwoods and nandina, and they now have goldenrod. Again.
Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com
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