Southern Wax Myrtle – 7 Gallon Pot (3-4′)

USDA Plant Hardiness Zones: 7a-10b  Find Your Zone

Plant Type:  Evergreen Shrub or Small Tree

Flower Color:  Inconspicuous

Flower Size:  Small 

Flowering Period:  Late Winter

Flower Type:  Single

Fragrant Flowers:  Yes

Foliage Color:  Olive Green

Fragrant Foliage:  Yes

Berries:  Yes

Berry Color:  Blue-Grey

Attracts:  Birds

Resistances:  Deer – more info, Disease, Drought, Heat, Humidity, Insect, Rabbit, Wet Soils

Myrica cerifera, commonly called Southern Wax Myrtle or Southern Bayberry, is a fast growing evergreen shrub or small tree with a very attractive natural shape and look. It is native to the southeastern U.S. from New Jersey to Florida through the Gulf States to Oklahoma and Texas and further south into Mexico and Central America. The glossy, olive green leaves are aromatic, emitting a bayberry candle fragrance when crushed. Fragrant, non-showy flowers appear in late-winter as 1-inch long catkins that are followed on female plants by attractive clusters of small, blue-gray berries that appear in fall persisting throughout the winter. The berries are used to make bayberry candles, soaps and sealing wax. Birds with appreciate you planting a wax myrtle in your landscape because they enjoy feeding on the berries.

Growing in an irregular form to 10-15 feet tall and wide, the Southern Wax Myrtle is an ideal selection for use in the landscape in groupings or as a natural or clipped formal evergreen hedge, privacy screen or background planting. Lower branches can be removed to form a very attractive small tree that serves well as a specimen in home foundation plantings and landscape borders. Since birds love the winter berries, it is a welcome addition to bird and wildlife gardens.

Note:  For our customers who live and garden north of USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 7a, where the Southern Wax Myrtle is not winter hardy, you’ll be happy to know it can be grown in containers that can be brought indoors during winter and placed back outside when temperatures warm up in spring.

The Southern Wax Myrtle is very easy to grow in full sun to part shade. It adapts to most any soil of average fertility to poor soils. When young it prefers a consistently moist soil, but established plants are exceptionally drought tolerant. Those living and gardening on or near the coast will be happy to know that this attractive evergreen plant is tolerant of salt spray. No pruning is required however plants respond well to it for hedges, shapes and tree form.