Dendropanax. Rarely seen in America, this Ivy relative in the family Araliaceae is an enchanting small evergreen tree with ascending branches. In older gardens where trees have grown to the point where one is looking into tree trunks out of ones windows, then this is the answer. This is one of the best evergreen small trees that thrives under the shade of larger trees. Notice the pictures from The Atlanta Botanical Garden, where it is growing in their shade garden. The foliage somewhat resemble Fatshedera with its shiny dark green lobbed leaves in its juvenile form, but when it reaches its adult stage, the leaves will loose their lobes and become entire. It has the characteristic Aralia bloom head in terminal panicles of small umbellose flowers, which look like a Buttonbush flower, Cephalanthus, followed by black berries. My first plants came from seed I collected in Japan at a small restaurant in Niigata on the west coast. They had been pruned back to about 6-7', but had still flowered and set a profuse crop of seed. This plant is native to Japan's main Honshu Island, and the southern islands of Kyushu and Shikoku. I have seen it doing well in Raleigh, NC, at Juniper Level Botanical Garden (Plant Delights Nursery). The pictures below were taken at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.
Zones 7-10
