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Chimonanthus praecox
Also called Wintersweet, Japanese Allspice, Wax Ume
A deciduous shrub grown mainly for its strongly fragrant, yellow winter flowers that appear on bare stems. Give it a sunny or lightly shaded spot in well-drained soil.
Chimonanthus praecox, also known as wintersweet and Japanese allspice, is a species of flowering plant in the genus Chimonanthus of the family Calycanthaceae. The plant is native to China and is known as làméi (蠟梅) in Chinese. It is also grown in Iran, where it is called gol-e yakh (گلیخ) or "ice flower" in Persian.
The plant is a vigorous deciduous shrub growing to 4 m (13 ft) tall with an erect trunk and leaves 5–29 cm (2–11 in) long and 2–12 cm (1–5 in) broad. Its strongly scented pendent flowers, produced in winter (between November and March in UK,) on bare stems, have 15-21 yellow or pale green-yellow tepals, the inner ones usually with purplish red pigments.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Chimonanthus praecox by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
