![]() ![]() Photo Credits: "Myrica californica" by gertjanvannoord is licensed under CC BY-ND 2. This plant makes an excellent hedge or screen, an ideal replacement for invasive laurel hedges, and can be heavily pruned for narrow spaces. It’s roots have a relationship with nitrogen-fixing microorganisms, which allow it to grow in low-nutrient soils while enriching them over time. For best success, place it in a full to mostly sunny place with basically any soil type, from damp to dry, and plenty of room to grow. Gardening with Pacific Wax Myrtle: This hardy wonder shrub will not only tolerate, but will look stunning, in a wide variety of light and soil conditions. Special features & uses: evergreen, hedgerow and windbreak, wildlife favorite, bank stabilization and erosion control, deer resistant.Native habitat/range: Common in coastal conifer forests, bogs, sand dunes, stream banks, wet meadows, marshes, and moist hillsides along the Pacific Northwest coastline from British Columbia through most of California, sea level to 1000m.Wildlife support: berries are prized food for small mammals and birds flowers attract and provide nectar to adult butterflies overall plant/vegetation is caterpillar host plant and larval food source for many species of native moths.Growth rate/ease: fast growing, very easy to grow.Light requirements: full sun, part-sun / part-shade.Size at maturity: 10’-30’ tall, 10’-20’ wide (can be heavily pruned into more narrow spaces) Dwarf Wax Myrtle Botanical Name: Myrica pusilla Plant Type: Shrub Light Requirement: Full Sun, Partial Shade, Full Shade Water Demand: Medium Landscape Use.Plant type/canopy layer: evergreen perennial large shrub.Inconspicuous flowers arrive in spring and transform into clusters of small red to purple berries by fall that are a magnet for backyard birds and wildlife. It has narrow, lance-shaped leaves that are glossy and smooth to the touch. or they can be limbed up into a handsome small evergreen tree, revealing the smooth gray, almost white bark.Pacific Wax Myrtle is a fast growing, large evergreen shrub that functions perfectly as a screen or hedgerow (goodbye invasive laurel!). They are perfect for naturalizing but are also at home in more formal landscapes where they can be pruned into a handsome evergreen hedge as in the Herb Garden at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. Their ability to sucker into colonies is ideal for bank or shoreline stabilization and they are quite useful in wetland restoration gardens and riparian buffer plantings. Wax myrtle ( Morella cerifera, formerly named Myrica cerifera) is a host for butterflies and provides food and shelter for birds. They prefer acidic soils but will prosper in sandy, loam and even heavy clay soil. This native shrub thrives in full sun and sandy, well-drained soil. Tolerance of salt and salt spray makes them an excellent plant for use near the coast and Chesapeake Bay. Their roots contain nitrogen fixing bacteria producing the needed nitrogen to allow the Wax Myrtle to thrive in extremely poor, infertile soils. Wax Myrtles are adaptable shrubs tolerant of poor sterile soils, high winds, waterlogged soils, salt and salt spray and can grow in sun or part shade. The berries are covered in a thick whitish waxy coating from which bayberry candles are made. These persist throughout the winter providing beauty for our landscapes and food for all our wintering songbirds. ![]() In fall the females produce small round pewter-gray fruits that are densely clustered along the branches. The narrow wedge-shaped leaves are a lustrous olive green and if you look closely, you can see they are dotted on both the upper and lower surface with yellow and brownish resin glands that yield the spicy bayberry aroma when rubbed or crushed ( hmmm, that wonderful smell). All parts of the shrub are delightfully aromatic, with a strong bayberry fragrance. They offer a handsome fine-textured, billowy habit growing quickly to about 10 to 15’ in height but are capable of reaching 25’. Not only are Wax Myrtles a beautiful native evergreen (large shrub or small tree depending on how you prune it) but they are also tremendously adaptable and easy to grow. Our evergreen Wax Myrtle or Southern Bayberry ( Myrica cerifera) is handsome in every season of the year but it particularly sparkles in the winter after the leaves of deciduous trees have fallen leaving a gray and brown landscape. By Betsy Washington, Northern Neck Chapter
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