Dichroa febrifuga Allen Bush In the garden

In the garden

is one of the great fragrant natives of the eastern United States

and other pollinators to a plant that asks remarkably little in return

each cradled in a prickled husk

China has cultivated Camellia oleifera for over two thousand three hundred years for the oil pressed from the seeds

Dichroa febrifuga Allen Bush In the gardenFew garden shrubs carry a resume like Dichroa febrifuga. In the ground this is a handsome, medium evergreen with lacecap heads of small blue flowers in late spring and, better still, clusters of berries in fall that ripen to an almost unreal iridescent, metallic blue, the kind of structural color usually reserved for beetles and tropical birds. A relatively recent introduction from China, the plant sits close enough to Hydrangea, in the family