Blue elderberry

A western North American native large shrub or small multi-stemmed tree that erupts in clouds of magenta-pink pea-family flowers along bare branches in early spring - often before the leaves expand. The round, heart-shaped blue-green leaves with palmate venation follow, and flat 2-4 inch seed pods ripen burgundy-red and persist into winter. A drought-tolerant, butterfly- and bee-supporting native of dry slopes from northern California east to southern Utah and south to Arizona.

The hardiest and largest of the California lilacs - a fast-growing broadleaf-evergreen shrub of the Pacific coast that smothers itself in dense thyrse clusters of pale-to-deep blue flowers in spring. Glossy three-veined, finely toothed dark-green leaves and a billowing shrub habit make it a signature blue mass on West Coast slopes. Drought tolerant once established, it asks for little summer water and resents overwatering; deer and elk browse the foliage and the bloom is a documented draw for native bees.

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 native deciduous willow of northern North America famous for the silky, silvery catkins - the "pussies" - that swell on bare stems in late winter, often while snow is still on the ground. Usually grown as a large multi-stemmed shrub 6 to 15 feet tall, it thrives in moist to wet soils and tolerates drier ground better than most willows. Dioecious (separate male and female plants), it is one of the earliest pollen and nectar sources of the year and a documented host for a wide range of native bees and Lepidoptera.

The signature evergreen shrub of the California chaparral and coastal foothills - leathery, sharply toothed dark-green leaves, flat-topped clusters of small white summer flowers, and the brilliant red pomes that earned it the names Christmasberry and California holly (and, by way of the Hollywood hills, supposedly the name "Hollywood"). Long-lived and deeply drought-tolerant; the winter berries feed more than twenty bird species when little else is fruiting.

A small native deciduous tree (or thicket-forming, suckering shrub) of eastern and central North America, grown for clouds of fragrant white 5-petaled flowers that open in March before the leaves and for the edible red plums that follow in early summer. It forms a broad, spreading crown with attractive dark reddish-brown twigs that sometimes carry thorny lateral branchlets. A documented larval host for swallowtails and other butterflies, with flowers of special value to native, bumble, and honey bees.