Hello Native Tree Lovers :)
Here we're highlighting a few plants new to Tree Talk Natives that might be perfect for your gardens.
New Jersey Tea
With fragrant white summer blooms in oval clusters and attractive dark-green, grayish leaves, New Jersey Tea is a popular shrub, for us and lots of pollinators.
Ceanothus americanus is host to azure and hairstreak butterflies, and it attracts hummingbirds. While songbirds feed on the black summer fruits, protection may be needed for rabbits, which like to nibble.
New Jersey Tea’s young, yellow twigs pop after the leaves drop, especially against a snowy background.
This shrub also makes for a beautiful, low-growing hedge, maturing to about 3 feet high and round. With its deep taproot, New Jersey Tea is a great choice for slopes and bank stabilization. Also good in a butterfly garden and as a hedge, foundation plant and groundcover.
Lowbush Blueberry
Yes, Lowbush Blueberry provides delicious summer fruits. But it also offers four-season interest with lovely urn-shaped spring flowers, purple and crimson fall foliage and yellowish to reddish winter twigs.
Growing only 6 inches to 2 feet, Vaccinium angustifolium also makes a great low hedge, and the more plants together, the better the harvest!
Native bees are its primary pollinators, birds eat the fruits, and butterflies drink the nectar.
Lowbush does best in full sun to part shade, and it likes well-drained soil. In 2005 Lowbush Blueberry won the prestigious Cary Award, highlighting plants that thrive across New England and make good garden plants.
Mountain Ash
Here’s a gloriously beautiful yet unusual, ornamental tree. Mountain Ash, Sorbus americana, features a rounded crown and lacey summer blooms that appear just as the leaves come out.
Butterflies love those blooms, and the Canada Tiger Swallowtail butterfly and the White Spring Moth, among others, use it as a larval host.
Its stunning, bright-red, berry-like fruits hang on through fall, sweetening through cold spells and ultimately becoming a veritable feast for songbirds.
Mountain Ash likes sun and moist, well-drained soil, and like the name implies, it’s often found in the mountains. It tends to lose its leaves early – the better to see the fruits – and benefits from a dash of spring fertilizer and supplemental water during droughts.
Quaking Aspen
Need shade? Quaking Aspen tops out at 40 to 60 feet and also features creamy white bark on a strong central leader and foliage that turns from bright green to golden yellow.
Perhaps its most intriguing feature is the leaf, which flutters at the slighted breeze, giving the entire tree a shimmering effect. Populus tremuloides thrives in both moist and dry soils, and it likes sun to part sun.
Bonus: Quaking Aspen is among the best plants for pollinators, attracting both butterflies and native bees. The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail uses it as a larval host.
Pitch Pine
If you’ve been to the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, you’ve seen Pitch Pine – at least a dwarf version. Pinus rigida is the dominant species in the barrens, where the soil is sandy, acidic and not very nutritious. It’s also the pine of Cape Cod.
Like Quaking Aspen, Pitch Pine grows to 40 to 70 feet tall, and its gnarled branches can twist themselves into various works of modern art. Its bark is deeply grooved and reddish, eventually turning black.
Pitch Pine is a larval host for moth species, and birds including Blue Jays, chickadees and warblers use it for cover and nesting. This tree likes sun and dry, rocky or sandy soil, although it also grows in swampy areas and is salt tolerant.
Fun fact: Pitch Pine grows "epicormic branches" up and down its trunk :)
About the author:
Jennifer Anderson owns Tree Talk Natives, a native tree and plant nursery in Rochester, Mass. A former news reporter, she loves to talk native plants and can be reached at jennifer@treetalknatives.com.
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