After reading your post, the first thing that comes to mind is Polemonium/Jacob's Ladder--it blooms sort of lavender in late Spring here (mid-to-late May; it's blooming now here) with delicate, almost fern-like foliage. Japanese painted fern doesn't bloom but is a nice textural contrast to other shade lovers. I like the interesting foliage of Virginia knotweed/Polygonum virginianum for contrast--it has an interesting rusty-red chevron on each variegated green & white leaf, altho' it's a late-season, part shade bloomer with insignificant cranberry-red flowers. Trycirtis hirta/toad lily is completely different from many other shade-loving perennials and has interesting blooms--the ones I've planted in full shade are thriving & multiplying each year. They offer very late season white blooms with purple speckles--the bees LOVE them. Alchemilla mollis/Lady's mantle & Heuchera/Coral Bells 'Purple Palace' put on a season-long show in both my part sun & full shade beds every year without requiring any attention from me, making them two of the most carefree perennials in my garden. In my experience, neither are bothered by pests. The Heuchera offers a decided contrast in foliage color while the Lady's Mantle offers a foliage contrast in shape and texture that is pleasing season-long. I won't discount Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' for tiny, true blue flowers in early spring but it's been my experience the plants are prey to some sort of disease or infestation that turns a certain portion of the foliage dark after they bloom and IMO renders them less attractive as a result (which, thankfully, the surrounding hostas soon conceal).

Kind of a late post for this thread, but... I have what I thought was a PeeGee which looks a lot like an Oakleaf. It has panicules up to 10 or 12 inches long. They droop very little, maybe because I prune each Spring about a third of the height of the shrub. It is nowlate fall and the shrub?tree is about 12 feet tall. When I prune in the Spring I take out all the smaller branchs and leave the larger ones. The shrub after pruning is about six feet tall.It blooms nicely all summer. My Oakleaf, has, of course, the oak leaves, but the flowers are very much like the PeeGee flowers. Has anyone else found that to be true? It is also leggier and has a bit of a scraggly growth habit to it. But it will tolerate lots of shade. Someone mentioned that )PeeGee is the tree form of Limelight. Is this true? I have two smaller limelights (O think) which have moptop flowers that are huge, but the shrub itself is smaller. Any info on these three varieties and their comparative feaures would be appreciated. Thanks.

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.

The leaves appear to have some kind of fungal infection that produces brown spots that slowly dissolve the affected leaf part, leaving a hole. Resembles Cercospora Leaf Spot and Anthracnose. The first one usually is a problem that crops up in the Fall just as leaves are turning ugly and the low levels of sunlight make the fungus affected areas visible. May is waaaay early to be seeing this unless the plant had a heavy infestation last year. Anthracnose is somewhat similar but the brown spots are round and a little "sunken". See more info and pictures in these two links: http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/diagnose/plant/deciduous/hydrangea/spotsorblotches.html http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-1212/ANR-1212.pdf Being such a newly purchased plant, if they will return your money or give you another specimen, I would do that. You should not have to mess with this on a new shrub.