Photo: NPS Photo, Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Minnie-bush

Rhododendron pilosum

Also called minniebush, hairy minnie-bush, Menziesia pilosa, Azalea pilosa.

Small nodding bells of greenish white flushed with red in late spring, on an upright mountain shrub with hairy leaves and shreddy bark.

RareShowy flowers

Type: Shrub
Mature height: 3–6 ft
USDA zones: 5–7
Growth rate: Slow
Sun: Full, Part
Soil moisture: Dry, Average
Grows wild in: The Appalachians, rocky ground and dry uplands
Native range: 8 states, north to Pennsylvania, south to Georgia and west to Tennessee
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Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia
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Minnie-bush is a deciduous shrub of the southern and central Appalachians, from southern Pennsylvania to northern Georgia, on heath balds, bogs and rocky summits. Botanists long kept it in its own genus, Menziesia, until DNA work placed it among the rhododendrons. Tennessee lists it as a species of special concern, and Pennsylvania lists it as rare. Each leaf ends in a tiny whitish point, and the old bark hangs in shreds. Set it on a sunny, rocky slope or in a peaty bed with azaleas, where its hanging bells can be seen up close.

Size, growth and what to expect

No source rates its growth, so our growth estimator treats it as slow, like our pinxterbloom azalea, about a foot a year. It makes a rigid, upright shrub 3 to 6 feet tall, and the bark of older stems hangs in loose shreds.

Small nodding bells open with the new leaves from May into July, a quarter to a third of an inch long, yellowish white to greenish and flushed with red. They hang on slender stalks in small clusters at the ends of last year's shoots. The glandular capsules ripen from August to October.

It grows wild in the mountains from southern Pennsylvania and western Maryland through Virginia and West Virginia to eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and northeastern Georgia. Its home is heath balds, bogs, rocky summits and rocky woods, mostly at high elevations.

How to grow Minnie-bush

Minnie-bush takes full sun or light shade, and it wants more sun than most rhododendrons. Give it a moist but well-drained, acid soil, loamy or peaty, with no lime. Set plants 4 feet apart and keep them 3 feet from a wall. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship potted. Plant dormant plants in early spring or fall, in a hole three times as wide as the root ball and no deeper. Set the top of the ball a little above grade, put the native soil back in, and mulch with pine needles or leaves, kept off the stems. The seed is tiny and needs light but no chilling. Sow it in winter on the surface of damp milled sphagnum, uncovered, under a clear cover at room temperature. Seedlings come up in one to three weeks.

Water weekly through the first two summers. Prune, if at all, right after bloom, since the flowers come at the ends of last year's shoots.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, so there are no male and female plants to pair. Rhododendrons are poisonous if eaten, so treat minnie-bush the same.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

Sources (10)