Heptacodium miconioides: Seven-Sons Flower

It’s mid-September and Heptacodium myconioides (Seven-Sons Flower) is nearly at peak. This late-flowering shrub from China is a welcome breath of freshness at the end of summer when nearly everything else is beyond-the-pale.

Originally discovered by the famed plant explorer E. H. Wilson, the plant was only introduced to the United States in 1980, largely through the efforts of the Arnold Arboretum.

Little known and seldom seen, it has far more than just its little wheels of six white flowers—capped by one (there’s the “seven” in its name) and bunched together in clusters, to commend it. Most notable on a year-round basis is its bark. It is very pale and exfoliates (peels in strips) to reveal a younger bark underneath that is light cinnamon in color. It stands out against a dark background and is wonderful in winter.

The leaves are also interesting…though they don’t have remarkable fall color. Generally clean and mid to dark green, they have three, instead of one, main veins (described by Dirr as “strongly three-nerved”). Though it is adaptable to a fairly wide range of soils, the shrub’s leaves will be markedly larger if it is grown in its preferred substrate—an organic, humusy, slightly acid soil with adequate moisture.

Here it’s grown as an understory ornamental where it maintains, or should I say flaunts, its characteristic habit—loose and open. Fortunately, it is amenable to pruning, and removing its ‘flyers’ allows a gardener to maintain it in a most attractive, vase-like shape.

It would be equally at home as the vertical accent in a border planting and underplanted with bulbs and/or perennials. It is hardy from zones 5-8 (though because it is not widely planted, these could be conservative), and is clearly a plant on the rise as its attributes become more widely known.

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