Conradina verticillata Fred Heutte probably a sweet orange or

probably a sweet orange or mandarin

swinging from deep cobalt to soft mauve depending on how much aluminum a plant can draw up

holding color in the moist and shaded corners just as the rest of the garden tires

since the thorns are formidable

Lovely with native azaleas and dogwoods that bloom in the same season

Conradina verticillata Fred Heutte probably a sweet orange orA small shrub of the Cumberland Plateau, found only on the flood scoured cobble and sand bars of three river systems in eastern Tennessee and a sliver of Kentucky: the Big South Fork of the Cumberland, the Caney Fork, and the Obed. The rest of the Conradina clan keeps to the sand scrub of Florida and the Gulf Coast of Alabama, sun baked and semitropical. This species took a different path, north into the cooler uplands, and the cold hardiness that