Pinxter azalea

A fast, suckering native shrub of streambanks and moist thickets across eastern North America, grown for huge flat-topped cymes of tiny lemon-scented white flowers in early summer and the clusters of dark elderberry drupes that follow. Spreads by root suckers into naturalized colonies 5 to 12 feet tall and wide; the flowers feed butterflies and the showy fruit feeds birds. The raw berries are not eaten fresh - they are cooked into jelly, pie, and wine.

A drought-and-flood-tolerant native shrub of eastern North America with brilliant three-season interest - spring white-pink flowers, glossy black antioxidant-rich late-summer berries, and brilliant wine-red fall foliage - plus an extraordinarily wide cold-hardiness range (USDA 3a-8b). The berries are astringent fresh but the basis of a small but growing commercial industry (juices, wines, jams, supplements) for their exceptionally high anthocyanin content. Spreads by suckers; site where colony formation is welcome.

A native southeastern US deciduous shrub with deep-red strap-petaled fragrant flowers in late spring - the scent variously described as strawberry, banana, or wine, and reliably present only on cultivated cultivars with selected fragrance. Among the most distinctive native shrubs for woodland-edge and shaded mixed borders.

A native North American deciduous shrub with exfoliating bark (hence "ninebark"), white-to-pink spring flower clusters, papery red seedpods, and reliable fall color. Colored-foliage cultivars (Diabolo, Coppertina, Summer Wine) extend the design palette. Adaptable + drought-tolerant once established.

Mapleleaf viburnum is the small one, the shade one, and the dry one, and those three facts are the whole reason to plant it. Missouri Botanical Garden puts it at 3 to 6 feet tall and 2 to 4 feet wide, which makes it roughly a third the size of arrowwood or blackhaw viburnum and the only member of this group that fits under an established oak without a fight. It is also, in MBG words, generally more shade tolerant than many of the other species of Viburnum, and the Wildflower Center rates its drought tolerance HIGH on dry rocky soils. Dry shade under mature hardwoods is the hardest site most gardeners own and the shortlist of shrubs that actually want it is short; this is on it. The leaves are the field mark and the name: opposite, three-lobed and coarsely toothed like a red maple leaf, 2 to 5 inches long, with small black spots on the undersides that no other viburnum in this catalog carries. Flowers are tiny, white, and held in flat-topped long-stalked cymes to 3 inches across, and the fruit ripens through red to blue-black in late summer. The autumn colour is the pay-off and it is genuinely unusual: MBG calls it excellent reddish-purple to magenta, and Wikipedia records the range as pale yellow through orange to pink, rose or red-purple depending on how much light the plant gets. Pink is not a colour eastern shrubs generally offer. Two honest limits. It suckers, and the Wildflower Center is blunter about it than MBG is - suckers profusely to form large, loose, open colonies - so you are planting a spreading understorey patch, not a specimen. And the fruit crop is thin compared with arrowwood or nannyberry, because a clonal colony is one genetic individual and viburnums generally need a second one. Plant it for the leaves, the ground it covers and the spring azure caterpillars, and treat any fruit as a bonus.

A native evergreen shrub of the eastern North American Appalachian + Piedmont understory producing extraordinary spring clusters of pink-to-white cup-shaped flowers with a unique spring-loaded pollination mechanism (anthers held under tension, triggered by visiting pollinators). State flower of Connecticut + Pennsylvania. Critically: NC State explicitly flags Kalmia as having HIGH-SEVERITY poison characteristics - all plant parts toxic to humans, dogs, cats, horses, and livestock; even honey from mountain-laurel nectar can poison humans ("mad honey").