
by Bronwynne Bailey
I am visiting my sister in Cleveland while she recovers from a total knee replacement. June articles will focus on highlights from her landscaping. Six years ago, I gave her a beautiful sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus ‘Hartlage Wine’) for her birthday. The petite beauty was three feet tall and two feet wide. I cautioned her while it looked like a shrub now, its mature height was over ten feet and to plant in place where it could mature without the need for arduous pruning. However, the beautiful flowers and delightful fragrance prompted her to plant the shrub outside her living room window.
This behemoth is now nearly as tall as her two-story house but creates a magnificent view from her living room and bedroom windows. Although she must prune two or three times a year, she insists she would plant it in the same place if she had to do it over again.


Sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus)
Native to the eastern United States, Sweetshrub typically reaches six to nine feet tall with fragrant flowers in deep red to maroon. Flowering lasts four to eight weeks in spring and early summer. Sweetshrub flowers have a fruity scent, described as pineapple, strawberry, melon, banana or bubble gum. The flowers are attractive to pollinators, long lasting as cut flowers, and can be dried and used in potpourri. The leaves, seed pods, and bark generate a spicy scent when crushed.
Fall fruits are two inches long, urn shaped and turn brown when seed pods are ripe. The glossy dark green leaves turn yellow in autumn. Sweetshrub is drought tolerant once the roots system is well developed, can be planted in full-sun to part-shade and is deer resistant. It is generally pest free and easy to grow. Phytophthora or Pythium root rot can occur in poorly drained soil. This plant makes a great addition to a forest understory or near a patio of garden bench. Plants grow at a moderate rate of twelve to eighteen inches per year under ideal growing conditions of partial shade plus deep, moist, loamy soil. The growth rate slows when planted in full sun or dry conditions.
Propagation through seeds does not guarantee characteristics like the parent plant. Removing and transplanting suckers from parent plants is an easy way to obtain new true-to-form plants. New plants require adequate moisture to establish roots.
Other species of Sweetshrub
- ‘Athens’ has highly fragrant, pale yellow-green flowers.
- ‘Burgundy Spice’ has deep burgundy-purple foliage.
- ‘Chinese Sweetshrub’ has a white flower with broad petals and small, waxy yellow petals in the center of the flower. The flower is larger than the North American species but lacks fragrance typical of our natives.
- ‘Hartlage Wine’ has flowers that are three inches wide, maroon to wine colored, with wide petals and a light fragrance. It grows larger and more upright than most sweet shrubs, at 8 to 15 feet tall
- ‘Michael Lindsey’ has dark, exceptionally fragrant flowers with dark green, shiny foliage. The size is generally six by six feet.
- ‘Venus’ is a hybrid of C. chinensis, C. floridus and C. occidentalis. It has ivory yellow buds that open to 3-to 4 ½-inches wide, fragrant, white flowers with purple centers. Plants grow six to ten feet tall and wide.
