Plant These Natives Instead of Coral Ardisia

Coral ardisia is a very attractive flowering shrub that is adapted to the hot sub-tropical climate of Florida. However beautiful, this shrub has a sinister side. It has rapidly encroached upon native areas bordering development and is outcompeting native understory plants and harming wildlife habitat. Fortunately, there are native plants that serve the same function in the landscape while contributing to a healthy natural ecosystem.

Let’s look at some alternative shrubs.

Native Shrubs

Ilex glabra (gallberry)

This upright, clump-forming, evergreen shrub is valued for its foliage and fruits. The lustrous, dark green leaves may have a few obtuse teeth toward the leaf apex or they may have entire margins. They are obovate to oblanceolate in shape and may reach a length of 3/4 to 2 inches. Gallberry becomes somewhat open with age and often loses its small lower branches. Female plants have berry-like, black drupes that occur from September to May of the following year.

Gallberry is excellent when used in mass plantings and as naturalizing material. It has been utilized as a hedge, foundation plant and accent plant. It makes a poor hedge because it thins toward the bottom.

Ilex glabra prefers a full sun to partial shade location in the landscape and moist, acidic soils; high-pH soils should be avoided. Older plants may be renewed by heavy pruning.

Cultivars include ‘Compacta’, dwarf female clone, tighter branching and foliage than species, grows 4 to 6 feet high, becomes leggy at base; ‘Georgia Wine’, turns burgundy during the winter; ‘Ivory Queen’ and ‘Leucocarpa’, white fruited forms, grow 6 to 8 feet high; ‘Nigra’, purplish foliage in winter; ‘Nordic’, compact rounded form, grows 3 to 4 feet tall, cold hardy, needs pruning to keep it dense; ‘Shamrock’, compact form, slower growing then species, leaves smaller and flat. Read more about one of my favorite native shrubs here.

Ilex vomitoria (dwarf yaupon holly)

The symmetrical, dense, rounded form of dwarf yaupon holly requires only infrequent pruning to maintain its 4- to 6-foot height and spread. Unpruned plants eventually grow 7 to 10 feet tall and slightly wider. Roots produce sprouts at the edge of the canopy, producing dense thickets with time. Ideally suited as a low-growing foundation plant, dwarf yaupon holly is also excellent as a tall ground cover for a large-scale commercial or industrial landscape. It can be sheared into a formal hedge or into any of a number of topiary shapes. Most people “meatball” the plant into a globe. The small, gray-green leaves of ‘Nana’ have no spines, and the female plants of this cultivar rarely produces berries. Leaves are slightly larger than on ‘Shillings’.

Growing well in sun or light shade in soils from dry to wet, dwarf yaupon holly withstands drought when established and is highly salt-tolerant, making it ideally suited to seaside plantings. It is a selection of the native yaupon holly, which grows naturally without irrigation on the dunes along the Atlantic Ocean. Growth rate is slow to moderate. Space plants 4 to 5 feet apart in a mass planting. Be sure to set plants several feet back from a walk, driveway or lawn area, because plants grow wider than tall and often require pruning to control their lateral growth. If you need to prune in this manner, be sure to leave the bottom of the plant much wider than the top so that lower foliage is left on the plant. If you attempt to shear vertically, the lower branches will be shaded and will often lose foliage. This will give the shrub an unsightly, dark, leafless bottom. Read more about this attractive evergreen shrub here.

Psychotria nervosa (wild coffee)

Psychotria nervosa is a Florida native shrub that gets its common name from the small, red, ellipsoid fruit it produces (Fig. 1). Fruit resembles the true coffee bean. The leaves of this plant are generally 6 inches long and are narrowly obovate in shape. These glossy green leaves are puckered with impressed veins on the upper surfaces of the leaf blades, and there is pubescence along the veins on the leaf undersides. The shiny, dark green foliage gives a rich texture to any landscape. The small, white inflorescence occurs terminally on the branchlets during the warm months of the year. Each flower is a sessile or stalked, open, short cyme.

This 4- to 10-foot-tall plant may be used in the landscape as a specimen or foundation plant and is very effective when planted in mass. It stays relatively small in the sun and takes to clipping quite nicely. It makes a nice base or background plant for a shrub border. Birds and other wildlife are often associated with this plant for the fruit it produces.

Wild coffee is a moderately drought tolerant plant that will perform well in a partial shade or full shade location in the landscape. Plants in the full sun often have chlorotic foliage. A plant in the full shade can grow into a small tree with an open canopy. It is very cold tender and should be protected if grown north of hardiness zone 10b. This plant will grow on any well-drained soil. Read more about this native plant here.

Looking for a practice exam for Florida LARE Section F?

Florida Landscape Architect Exam Practice Test is the only practice test available to help you pass the licensing exam.