Quackin Grass Nursery

Symplocos paniculata - Rarely offered. Asiatic Sweetleaf is a large rounded shrub cloaked in alternate dark green semi-glossy tongues of noticeably veined leaves. Pretty, creamy white fragrant panicles occur on the previous season's growth in spring. The flowers look almost brush-like in great part to the numerous extended anthers providing for a soft appearance. Though the flowers are welcome and relatively showy it is the fruit in the late summer that provides us with its more enduring common moniker: Sapphireberry. Each glossy, oval fruit to about one-third inch long is turquoise-sapphire blue, a gorgeous and unforgettable tint hanging in open clusters from the panicles that were spring flowers. The bees enjoy the flowers and this is a great bird plant, too; the birds revel in the fruits as both our shrubs are picked clean before the autumn sets in. Speaking of which you will require two shrubs for proper cross pollination so Michael Dirr insists. Full sun in fertile, draining soil. Possibly cutting grown but more likely from seed.