Magnolia virginiana australis 'Santa Rosa' Brookgreen Gardens What the plant actually is:

What the plant actually is: one of the best late-season natives available to Southern and mid-Atlantic gardeners

The flowers are the reason to grow this shrub

and the fig repays the kindness with almost prehistoric grandeur

and the polished

Raised in the nineteenth century by the Tagliabue brothers at their nursery near Milan

Magnolia virginiana australis 'Santa Rosa' Brookgreen Gardens What the plant actually is:Sweetbay magnolia ranges across the moist ground of the eastern United States, from Massachusetts to Texas, and in the South becomes the larger, evergreen tree botanists call Magnolia virginiana var. australis. 'Santa Rosa' is a superior evergreen selection of that southern variety, a Woodlanders introduction gathered in Santa Rosa County, in the Florida panhandle. The distinction is in the foliage. Where an ordinary sweetbay can look a little thin,