Seeds and cuttings I collect around North Carolina, what they turned out to be, and how to grow them for a NC Piedmont native-plant nursery.
Lindera benzoin · Lauraceae
A crushed leaf smells like allspice and citrus. Scarlet drupes in early fall, on female shrubs only.
Community photos of Lindera benzoin to study before I head out: leaf, flower or bract, ripe fruit, bark, whole plant.
Common throughout the NC Piedmont including Orange, Durham, and Person counties; native in Mountains, Piedmont, and brownwater floodplains of the Coastal Plain (FAC wetland status). Piedmont/Coastal Plain plants are largely the hairy-twigged var. pubescens.
Best bet: Seed only. Cultivars root from cuttings but wild stock rarely does. Depulp immediately, mashing and floating off the aromatic flesh and rinsing to a clean brown stone, and never let the seed dry, since it loses viability fast. Sow into moist media and cold-moist stratify at about 40°F for roughly 90–120 days (3–4 months). Skip any warm pre-chill: UK trials by Poston and Geneve found a warm phase lowers germination, since the embryos are already fully developed. Sow in spring for emergence that season.
A Piedmont native at home in Orange and Person County, so an ideal grow-out, and the larval host for the spicebush swallowtail. Wants moisture and part to full shade; give heavy clay beds organic matter and consistent water and it thrives, taking the heat and humidity fine. No pest or invasiveness concerns. Main caution: it is dioecious, so plant several seedlings to guarantee fruiting females. It suckers into colonies, which for a nursery is a feature.
Each look-alike with the one character that settles it. Tap a photo to zoom.
Mitten and three-lobed leaves are mixed in among the simple ones. Where all the leaves are simple, its flowers sit on long branched pedicels at the twig tip, while spicebush flowers are sessile against the twig
Toothed leaf margins and non-aromatic foliage, against spicebush's entire, spicy-scented leaves. Both carry red fall fruit
Much larger teardrop leaves broadest past the middle with a drip-tip, no spicy scent, and green-then-brown fleshy fruit instead of red drupes
Green four-angled twigs and opposite leaves, against spicebush's round speckled twigs and alternate leaves. Its fruit is a warty pink capsule, not a smooth red drupe
Spicebush is a streamside understory shrub of moist rich forest: alluvial bottomland and creekbanks, plus mesic slopes over decent soil. On the trail it reads as a knee-to-head-high, many-stemmed shrub with smooth alternate obovate leaves and slender olive-green twigs, growing in loose colonies along water. The scent is what I trust. Crush a leaf, twig, or berry and there's a warm allspice-and-citrus hit that no look-alike shares.
Season matters twice here. For collecting seed, late August through September, when the drupes flush from green to glossy scarlet red and the foliage turns clean butter-yellow; both make the plant pop in the shaded understory. Fruit persists into October, but birds get most of it. For ID and scouting, an early-spring visit in Mar–Apr catches the leafless twigs dusted with tiny yellow flowers, the earliest color in the bottomland.
Spicebush is dioecious, so only female shrubs fruit, and there's no way to sex a plant until it's carrying berries. That means scouting in early fall and collecting off the red-fruited plants. Fruit ripens late August into September; pick the drupes just as they redden, because birds strip them within days. One brown seed per berry.
Viability hinges on not letting the seed dry out. Depulp the day of collection, mashing and floating off the aromatic flesh and rinsing to a clean stone, then move straight into moist media. Cold-moist stratify at about 40°F for 90–120 days, three to four months, and skip warm pre-chilling. University of Kentucky trials by Poston and Geneve found a warm phase lowers germination, since the embryos are already fully developed. Sow in spring for emergence that season. It takes several years to reach fruiting size, so line out enough seedlings to be confident of getting females.
Around Hillsborough in Orange County, work the Eno River bottomlands. Eno River State Park has rich floodplain along the Cox Mountain, Fanny's Ford, and Pump Station trails, and Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area holds moist rich forest on mesic north-facing slopes and along the Eno's edge. Johnston Mill and Brumley Nature Preserves, both Triangle Land Conservancy, are strong too, along New Hope and Seven Mile creeks. Anywhere a Piedmont trail drops to a shaded damp creek terrace is prime spicebush ground.