Pondspice

Size, growth and what to expect

No source rates its growth, so our growth estimator treats it as a medium grower, like our spicebush, about a foot and a half a year. It makes a heavily branched shrub or small tree, usually 10 to 15 feet tall, with zigzag twigs. Its narrow, leathery leaves are only 0.6 to 1.6 inches long, and they turn bright yellow in fall. Unlike spicebush, its twigs and leaves have no spicy scent.

Clusters of tiny yellow flowers open at the tips of the bare twigs in March and April, before the leaves. Its round, bright red fruit, up to 0.4 inch across, ripens from May or June and shows into fall. Birds and small mammals eat the fruit. The leaves feed the caterpillars of the palamedes and spicebush swallowtails.

It grows wild at the edges of cypress ponds, limesink ponds, Carolina bays and swamps. It spreads by root suckers into thickets around pond margins, and it sprouts back vigorously after fire.

How to grow Pondspice

Pondspice grows best in part shade or light shade. It wants acid, sandy or peaty soil that stays moist to wet, and it will not stand long droughts. Set plants 6 feet apart and keep them 6 feet from a wall. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, 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. Sow it as spicebush is sown. Clean the seed from the red fruit and sow it outdoors in fall, a quarter to half an inch deep under mulch, before it can dry out. For a spring sowing, keep it in damp sand in the refrigerator for three to four months.

Keep it watered through dry spells, since it needs soil that never dries out. It needs no pruning.

Male and female flowers grow on separate plants and only females carry fruit, so plant three to five seedlings to get both. Flies and small bees probably carry the pollen, drawn to nectar at the base of the female flowers. Laurel wilt, a fungus carried by an introduced beetle, has killed pondspice in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. It blocks the water-conducting wood, so the leaves wilt and the plant can die quickly. The beetle breeds in pondspice stems, though from 2011 to 2020 the disease struck it less hard than redbay. Plant only stock known to be free of laurel wilt, and only where it will not give the disease new hosts. Remove any plant that wilts suddenly in summer, and never move firewood.