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Heptacodium miconioides, the seven-son flower, is a deciduous shrub or small tree from central China, the only species in its genus. It is grown mainly for its late-summer white flowers and red calyces, and for its tolerance of cold and shade.
Heptacodium miconioides, the seven-son flower, is a species of flowering plant. It is the sole species in the monotypic genus Heptacodium, of the honeysuckle family Caprifoliaceae. The common name "seven-son flower" is a direct translation of the Standard Chinese name 七子花 qī zi huā.
Endemic to China, this species was discovered for Western horticulture in 1907 by the British plant hunter Ernest Wilson on behalf of the Arnold Arboretum. It was growing on mountain cliffs at 'Hsing-Shan Hsien' in present-day Xingshan County in the west of Hubei Province in central China. Considered rare even at that time, only nine populations are known to remain in the wild (e.g. one on Tiantai Mountain), all of them in Anhui and Zhejiang provinces and threatened by habitat loss. The species is now under second-class national protection in China.
Readily propagated from either seed or by softwood cuttings, the species has since become widely available in North America and Europe, and was stocked by 26 nurseries in the UK alone in 2011.[1] H. miconioides is extremely hardy, and tolerant of temperatures as low as −35 °C (−31 °F). It is also fast-growing, and can reach a height of 3 m (9.8 ft) in just five years; it is also very shade tolerant. All six of the first H. miconioides planted in the United States in 1980 at the Arnold Arboretum are still alive, indicating an expected lifespan greater than 40 years. This plant has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Recent tests have demonstrated that extracts from the plant possess antibacterial activity.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Heptacodium 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.
