Odorless Bayberry

Size, growth and what to expect

No source rates its growth, so our growth estimator treats it as a medium grower, like our northern bayberry, about a foot and a half a year. It makes an evergreen shrub 10 to 20 feet tall, and a few reach 23 feet. Its thick, leathery leaves run 1.5 to 4 inches long, dark green and shiny above. Unlike those of other bayberries, they have no scent when crushed.

Tiny golden-brown flowers open from January to April, packed into rounded clusters. On female plants, dark, warty fruits about a quarter inch across ripen in summer and fall, with white wax between the bumps. Each sits on a distinct stalk, where wax myrtle crowds its fruit tight along the stems.

It grows wild only on the Gulf Coastal Plain, from southern Georgia and northern Florida west to southeastern Louisiana. Its home is bayheads, titi swamps, bogs, pond margins, stream banks and wet pinelands. Its roots carry bacteria that fix nitrogen, so it grows in poor, wet soils. Fire suppression, drainage, feral hogs and land clearing threaten it.

How to grow Odorless Bayberry

Odorless bayberry grows in full sun or part shade, in a wet or moist, acid soil of sand or muck. It takes ground that stays wet, but not salt water or salt spray. Plant it 6 feet from a wall and set plants 8 feet apart for a screen. Keep it 15 feet from overhead wires, since a few reach 23 feet.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them in early spring or early fall, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stems. Bayberry seed will not sprout through its wax, so rub the wax off on a screen or soak it off in warm water. Sow cleaned seed outdoors in late fall under mulch, and seedlings come up in spring. For a spring sowing, keep it damp in the refrigerator for 90 days first.

Water weekly through the first two summers unless the ground stays wet. It sprouts back strongly after a fire. It needs little pruning.

Most plants are male or female, and only females bear fruit, so plant three or more seedlings for a male and a female. The wind carries the pollen, so a male must grow nearby. Birds eat the waxy fruit and spread the seed.