Plants of the Week: August 19

Due to frequent requests, I am finally making this week the official “variegated foliage week” here at the Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College. I also broke the rules this week by choosing five plants because it was impossible to select only four of these spectacular plants!

After being introduced to variegated plants, why would anyone want to go back to the old, boring, typical, green foliage plants when you could just as easily have leaves accented with varying shades of yellow and white instead?! I love variegated plants with a passion because they add variety, interest, and different colors into any garden. It is a lifetime goal of mine to breed a variegated cultivar of a plant that is presently not variegated yet.

Callicarpa mollis ‘Variegata’ translates to “with beautiful fruit,” and come winter, you will clearly see why. This plant produces light purple flowers that develop into dark purple berries. During the winter months, once this plant has dropped its leaves it will showcase its beautiful, large, dark purple berries on its stems, which is why it’s commonly known as beautyberry. These berries ripen in the autumn and are a favorite food of many birds. The variegation of the foliage is unstable, meaning that some leaves will be variegated while others will not. Most variegated plants just have margins of yellow, while Callicarpa mollis ‘Variegata’ displays several white variegation patterns. Some leaves appear splashed with white paint while others look spray-painted.

Photo Credit: Aaron D’Addio

Garden Location: Whittier House

Stachyurus chinensis ‘Magpie’ is commonly called spike tails. It features a fountain-like form with arching branches that get covered in spring with white hanging racemes that resemble strings of pearls on bare branches. Stachyurus chinensis ‘Magpie’ boasts having the longest racemes of all Stachyurus. This cultivar displays green foliage with white variegated leaf margins with irregular border. My favorite part of this cultivar is that it also often produces select branches of entirely white leaves that dramatically contrast with the green background foliage. Spike tails produce flowers on old wood so prune immediately after flowering.

Photo Credit: Aaron D’Addio

Garden Location: Off-Campus Study Office

Cornus kousa ‘Gold Star’ is commonly known as kousa dogwood, a small tree offering a rainbow of colors throughout the year. Usually variegation occurs on leaf margins, however, on this plant it’s in the center. Each oval-shaped, glossy leaf is irregularly painted a golden buttery-yellow along the center of its green leaves. In autumn, this yellow center turns red and the green margins turn purple, creating a completely different show of colors. In addition to the leaf variegation, this plant offers reddish stems. In spring, Cornus kousa ‘Gold Star’ features large, showy, white bracts that surround its flowers that slowly fade to pink during its six-week bloom period. These flowers then develop into large, bumpy fruits that start green and ripen to raspberry-red that numerous birds thoroughly enjoy.

Photo Credit: Aaron D’Addio

Garden Location: Papazian Hall

Cornus sericea ‘Silver and Gold’ is a shrub commonly known as yellow-twig dogwood. This plant hosts green leaves variegated with irregular silvery margins which transform to yellow in the fall. In spring, small, white flower clusters appear on terminal ends of branches, often continuing to sparsely bloom into the summer as well. These flowers later develop into clusters of whitish drupes in late summer that birds love as much as gardeners do. Cornus sericea ‘Silver and Gold’ also showcases stems which transform from green to gold during the winter months, hence its cultivar name of ‘Silver and Gold.’ This plant dramatically stands out in winter, especially when surrounded by a layer of fresh snow. The best golden-yellow color occurs on young stems, so annual pruning of old stems in early spring is recommended.

Photo Credit: Aaron D’Addio

Garden Location: Parrish Hall & McCabe Library

Zelkova serrata ‘Goshiki’ is a fairly rare Japanese zelkova cultivar. This is a medium-sized tree with serrated, oval-shaped dark green leaves variegated with creamy white just at the rim of the toothed leaf margins. This plant offers a variety of different fall foliage colors including a mix of yellow, bronze, dark red, and purple. Zelkova serrata ‘Goshiki’ belongs to the elm family, but is highly resistant to Dutch elm disease as well as the elm leaf beetle. Take one look at this plant’s beautifully variegated leaves and it will instantly make you wonder why it is so seldom cultivated.

Photo Credit: Aaron D’Addio

Garden Location: McCabe Library