Hi, I have mimosa tree seeds, if interested you can have them for SASE, just email me.

thanks for the correction, esh! my apologies on the confusion w/ vitex and buddleia, huge mistake on my part! i get tangled up with scientific names vs. common names. (thank goodness this is the internet, lest i'd dread trying to pronounce 'quercifolia'!) my 'coppertina' probably doesn't get enough sun, in fact, i don't think it gets more than an hour or two of filtered evening sun, if that. i must say, though, i noticed while taking the photos that the colors really didn't come through (lighting, flash, etc.) it's definitely got a distinctively copper/bronze color towards the peripheral, with more of a green/copper variance near the core. note the single flower shoot near the bottom of the photo - amplify the coloring there 3x or 4x; that is the approximate color right now. the 'summer wine' is definitely a deep burgundy reminiscent of purple shiso (which is popping up everywhere in my beds) or petra basil right now as well. they are just starting to bud and flower. and i'm hoping the colors will be much more pronounced in a few weeks, since most of this is new growth for the year. i remember when we picked up the plants last season, the 'coppertina' literally looked so deep in color that i thought it was fake/spraypainted. :) oh, and those are hydrangea quercifolia - they were also picked up from GNPS swap, along with some foam flower (which i would love to find more of right now). the hydrangeas were marked 'snow queen' when we got them, i have seen a couple of varieties, so i guess it would be important to give this info. i've never grown from cuttings, but i probably should give that a shot this year. of the three hydrangeas i have on that side of the house, an entire half of one died (i posted a thread about it here recently), and in the photo with the coppertina above, you'll if you look at the hydrangea bloom to the left, you should notice that it's the only one that hasn't really been opening up, and all of the leaves around it are wilted; this is what happened with the last one - that half of the hydrangea is dying, and the other half (same root ball) is doing superb. i don't get it...it's almost like something attacked that particular stem, it goes limp, it goes firm, it goes limp, and sometimes it eventually dies. i suspected heat, but it did this through winter also. i suspected root rot, but this area gets watered all the same (infrequently) and holds moisture well...very strange.

I have not seen any mention of Blackgums! Beautiful, large trees with truly blood colored foliage in the fall (They also provide little blue berries for the birds!). They grow fairly quickly and are pretty tolerant of drought conditions. Something we put in last year was a Princeton American Elm. Unbelievably fast grower and was bred to have resistance to Dutch Elm disease. There really is a reason they were so widely planted as street trees and would provide high shade for your front yard relatively quickly. They are also reputed to be very tolerant of city pollution. No mention of Red Cedar, either. Grows quickly, immune to virtually everything and has a nice grayish color which contrasts nicely with the dark greens of other trees. I have mixed them into our overstory oaks/maples etc. with podocarps, firs and deodars for a nice tapestry of color and texture. They give good cover for camellias from winter burn. Any kind of magnolia does well! We have planted virtually every kind we could find and they have distinguished themselves into overstory and understory nicely over the years. The Sweet bays smell particularly wonderful and are a good open, midsized tree without too much spread. They tend to get very thin in winter, however. The Little Gems have the advantage of blooming until frost without getting overly large. American Hollies are magnificent, but are difficult to get started for some reason. Once one is happy, however, they will take off. Mary Nells or Oakleafs might be a good compromise. River Birch, of course, is incredibly fast growing and would do well in your seasonally wet areas. They have beautiful yellow leaves in Fall, nice open shade in summer and gorgeous exfoliating bark. Finally, esh had a good suggestion in bald cypresses. We have one that is always commented upon by those who come over, especially in the Fall when the needles turn golden and carpets the ground around it. A truly beautiful tree and a fast grower. As he mentioned they do well in both dry sites and wet. The only difference to my eye is speed of growth and density of needles/boughs.

Oh yes, they are native plants and very beautiful. Naturally there are many more beautiful native plants than the ones I've mentioned. Butterfly weed is one my favorites (and I've never had it self sow on me, unfortunately). The point of this post was to show some of the ones that people comment on. But I'm glad for people to share their favorites. If you rescued them from around here, then they may have been native to your area at one point also. They just disappeared during human settlement of the area. For example, I find bigleaf magnolia on every Cherokee County site on which we rescue, north/south/east/west. Yet at the two places I've lived in Cherokee County, they were not in evidence. Curious. Thanks for sharing a picture of your fringe tree, Jeff. I cannot take credit for my pictures, they were all found on the web. It's nice to see such a mature one. I'm sure it stops traffic! Vroomp, here's the foliage on Bird's Food Violet (one of my favorites):