I had a meeting at the National Arboretum
this morning.
The outdoor
temperature was 24-degrees, and that was
without the wind chill.
As soon as
my meeting ended I went out to take a quick
look at a witch hazel,
possibly in
flower, which I could not find. I was
told about a patch of Lenten rose, but that
I would have
to drive to that location.
So I walked a garden right next to the
Arboretum Headquarters.
As I
walked a circular path I could smell a lemon
scented flower in the air. Could that
be possible?
I found a planted
shrub coming into flower that was called
fragrant wintersweet (Chimonanthus
praecox).
It is a deciduous
shrub native to China that is quite uncommon
in the US, as an ornamental planting.
When I got home from work this evening I
looked up the plant to read about it.
It flowers in late winter,
typically in
mid to late February, with flowers lasting
upwards to three-weeks.
The
flowers are a pale yellow and can have a
tinge of red in the center.
They
did smell great, and are likely the most
fragrant possible smell available
in any
plant in the world for late winter.
I could only find one source that sells
wintersweet through the Internet,
which
was Lazy S Farm of Barboursville, Virginia,
at a cost of $11 for a one-quart container.
Here is what
Lazy S Farm had to say about wintersweet:
An unknown, unassuming plant that delivers
the same impact in your garden in gray days
of winter as when you're walking thru a mall
and some store (Victoria's Secret comes to
mind) is pumping scent out the door!
Ranking up there with magnolias, lilacs and
winter honeysuckle in the scent department,
the fragrance is not overpowering but spicy
and lemon-like and romantic. Like
lilacs, most of the year it doesn't add
anything to the garden but its mass, which
isn't unattractive, just not particularly
noticeable. HOWEVER, the scent in the
dreary dead of winter earns this plant a
spot in your shrub border. Just
under-plant it with bulbs and let a Clematis
or other vine scramble around through it for
interest if you need to dress it up for the
other season when it isn't the absolute star
of the garden.
Has fairly nice yellow
fall color. Can be pruned to tree form. |
What
Could Possibly Be In Flower Today?
