Marty DeHart profiles one of the few evergreen shrubs native to the southeastern US. We’ll look at several varieties, and get growing tips.
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– I wanna talk about one of the few native evergreens, and it’s also one of my favorite shrubs. This is a genus called ill-ick-ee-um or ill-iss-ee-um. It should be pronounced ck, most people say ss, Illicium. It’s found in the southeastern United States. And it is, turns out, it’s a terrifically garden-worthy plant. Usually these are commonly referred to as some variety of anise bush, or anise tree, or anise shrub. And the reason being that, when you crack one of the leaves, it smells like licorice, or bruise it. And for that reason, here’s the really great thing, deer don’t touch it because they’re not licorice fans, turns out. This is a variety of the species Illicium floridanum, which means Florida anise. It stays very low and spreads out like a big muffin, if you will, or a biscuit. It’s really a beautiful little plant. Stays like this all year. In the spring and early summer, it has maroon starry blossoms on it. You can see there’s a grouping here. It likes high shade. And once established, pretty drought tolerant, which is surprising because in the wild they tend to grow on the edges of streams and swamps. But in our gardens, it turns out they’re hugely adaptable. I love this whole genus, and this particular variety is unlike anything else I’ve seen. It’s really worth seeking out. And I’m gonna show you a couple more types that are really great to have in your own garden. I showed you Swamp Hobbit, that little bitty guy, this is the same species, but a larger variety. This is, I believe this is Halley’s Comet. There are several different varieties of Florida anise that get about this size, and I’m not sure which one this is, but you can’t go wrong with any of them. And this one is interesting because you can see the remnants of a flower, even though, it blooms intermittently over the summer, and that’s just the very middle, but you can get a little bit of the idea of the color. It’s sort of a deep maroonish pink. But you can see that it’s been blooming for a while because these are ripe seed pods. And you can, it looks like star anise, does it not? And it’s obviously related. So this, these are from blooms in the spring. There’s a ripe one. There’s one starting to ripen. There’s a green one, still fat and developing. You can see that it obviously blooms over a long period of time. This is in pretty much, it’s bright shade, but it gets no direct sun, this location where this plant is, and it is thriving. It’s a super happy plant. Evergreen, looks great all year. Setting buds for next year. You can see these are all little flower buds that are coming on, all over the place, beautiful plant. I really think you can’t go wrong planting this plant. I mentioned there were a few flavors of Illicium. This is another species called parviflorum, which means few or small flower, depending. This is another native to the southeast sort. And this particular variety, this has this gorgeous goldy-green foliage, and is called Florida Sunshine. This is a fairly young plant. This will get 10 feet tall and probably eight feet wide ultimately. And it’s planted in a space where it has the room to do this. It’s a gloriously beautiful plant for a shady nook, because it does like some shade. And it really, this foliage color, really brightens up a darkish spot. One of the great things about this plant is it is, in my experience, remarkably drought tolerant, once it’s established. I have put these in hilltop shady gardens and they’ve done well. The straight species is also available, and it’s, on its own is worth having. The leaf doesn’t have the same color, but it’s a light bright green, which is also still very attractive. Flowers on this species are not what it’s grown for. It’s mostly a foliage thing. Once again, completely evergreen, looks great all year round. And I also wanna say that last winter, we had a freeze like no other, and it killed mass quantities of plants all over the Southeast. And the Illicium all made it. This is after that, and the Illicium all came back like gangbusters from that. So that’s another big positive in my book for this plant. I really recommend this whole genus to everybody. And they’re not too hard to find. They’re increasingly available in the trade, certainly worth looking at for your shaded garden.