Description
Beautiful yellow flowers announce the arrival of spring while providing a crucial source of nectar for emerging insects. The leaves, twigs, and berries have a long medicinal history in Indigenous cultures of the eastern woodlands, and the berries make an excellent flavoring for meats and stews. Some people also ferment the berries when green and immature, yielding distinct flavors. If fruit production is desired you will need more than one, as individuals are dioecious (two types of flowers are required, and each individual only makes one type).
Spicebush is a host to many different moth and butterfly species, notably the spicebush swallowtail, and native songbirds will flock to the red berries once they ripen in early fall.
Usually found in the understory of wet deciduous forest and bottomlands, spicebush can thrive in gardens so long as they receive adequate moisture. These seeds were gathered only from plants near the top of a slope (as opposed to down in the floodplain) so that ideally their descendants are tolerant of drier conditions. They likely won’t grow taller than 12 feet.
