In the heart of Fern Valley, the area between the road and the stream, that currently houses the shady cultivar collection, there are a number of large ungainly evergreen shrubs. This plant used to be Leucothoe populifolia, but I guess the taxonomists decided that it just didn't belong anymore. Probably lacked that powerful tendency to be raveged by leafspot that is such a defining charcteristic of the genus Leucothoe.
Obviously Ericaceous, the small white flowers give out a powerful aroma of....something. Something sweetish. I think of the fragrance as being related to honey, but I describe Fothergilla the same way and don't see/smell much in common. It eventually makes a ~12 x 15' evergreen shrub with a loosely informal appearance.....180 degrees from, say, an English Boxwood. The slight elevation in average temperatures associated with Global Warming/Zone Creep/... seems to have made available to us, here in the Washington DC area, a nice southeastern native shrub.
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