Virginia sweetspire is a multipurpose shrub. Still, it was slow to become a garden plant, probably because most gardeners thought it needed wet soils. But once established, the shrub does well in slightly acidic garden soils with a good layer of mulch.

Virginia sweetspire produces arching racemes of fragrant white flowers in March in Florida and late spring in Missouri. It is a good wildlife plant: the flowers offer nectar attracting butterflies and later in the year, the seeds are taken by small birds.

Sweetspire has alternate, elliptic leaves that are finely serrate (toothed along the edge). The leaves turn bright orange to red in autumn. Once it was realized how carefree this shrub was in the garden, several named cultivars appeared in nurseries. In autumn, ‘Saturnalia’ provides orange and red leaves, ‘Henry’s Garnet’ turns pinkish-red, and ‘Merlot’, of course, becomes a deep wine red. In the southern portion of its range, sweetspire often holds its leaves through winter.

Our sweetspire is a bit of an enigma. It is one of about 27 or so species, but its closest relatives live far away, halfway around the globe. The remainder of the genus is found in China, the Himalayas, Southeast Asia and Japan.

 

(Compiled from: “28. Itea Linnaeus”, Flora of China, Vol.8, pg.423, efloras.org.; “Itea virginica”, Wunderlin, R.P. and B.F. Hansen, Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants 2004 [S.M. Landry and K.N. Campbell (application development), Florida Center for Community Design and Research.] Institute for Systematic Botany, University of South Florida, Tampa and  “Itea”, A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, J.D. Zuk and C. Brickell, American Horticultural Society, DK Publishing, 1997)