Wax myrtle

Photo: Forest & Kim Starr — CC BY 3.0 · source

Survives zone 7 through 9

Harvest calendar

Ripens: Fruit in autumn through winter

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Grown far more for the leaves than the fruit — dried and used exactly as a bay leaf, which they closely resemble in flavor, and a genuine, documented substitute rather than a stretch. The small grey-blue, wax-coated berries are edible too, traditionally ground and used sparingly like pepper, but they are what candle and soap makers have always wanted the plant for, not what people eat by the handful — birds, especially yellow-rumped warblers, do that instead.

Hardiness

Zone 7–9

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Leaf, Fruit

Ripens

Fruit in autumn through winter

Mature size

3–4.5 m tall by 2.4–3 m wide; occasionally tree-like to 6 m

Light

Full sun to part shade

Soil pH

4.5–7.5, tolerant of both wet and dry extremes

Environment

Warm temperate to subtropical, wetlands to dry uplands

Native range

Southeastern United States, from New Jersey to Florida, west through the Gulf states to Texas, and south into Mexico and Central America — wetlands, river margins, sand dunes, pine barrens and dry upland forest alike.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

3–5 yrs

Growth speed

Fast

Spacing

250 cm (98 in) apart — about 6.3 m² (67 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Narrow, glossy, aromatic when crushed, dotted with tiny resin glands, semi-evergreen to evergreen

Root system

Shallow, spreading and fibrous, carrying nitrogen-fixing actinorhizal nodules formed with Frankia bacteria rather than the rhizobia of the pea family — which is how these shrubs live on raw sand and acid peat where little else will. Suckers freely from those roots.

Fruit description

Small, grey-blue, wax-coated berries in dense clusters along the stem

Propagation

Semi-hardwood cuttings in summer, or seed (needs the waxy coating removed and cold stratification).

Pollination

Wind-pollinated; dioecious — a female plant needs a male nearby to set fruit.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.