Spicebush

Size, growth and what to expect

Spicebush blooms before its leaves, in March, when clusters of tiny, fragrant, greenish-yellow flowers open along the bare twigs and male plants carry the larger, showier ones. It makes a rounded shrub 6 to 12 feet tall and as wide. Expect roughly a foot and a half of new height a year in its youth on an average site, the rate our growth estimator assumes for a medium shrub. It grows looser and spreads more in heavy shade. Female plants bear their first sizable crop of berries at 4 to 5 years from seed.

Only females set fruit, and they need a male nearby. The glossy red drupes, up to a half inch long, ripen in August and September, and songbirds take them during fall migration. The leaves feed the caterpillars of the spicebush swallowtail, the palamedes swallowtail and the promethea silkmoth. Wild allspice, its other name, comes from the spicy scent of the crushed leaves and twigs.

It grows wild from New England and Ontario south to Florida and west to Texas, Kansas and Iowa, in low woods, ravines and swamps and along streams.

How to grow Spicebush

Spicebush grows anywhere from deep shade to full sun, in moist or wet soil. Shade keeps it open; sun makes it dense and colors it better. Plants grow as wide as they are tall, so set them 6 feet apart and that far from a wall.

Plant dormant bare-root or potted shrubs 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 ring clear of the stems. No stake, no fertilizer. Clean the seed from the red berries 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.

Water weekly through the first summer if rain is short. Deer mostly pass spicebush by, but rabbits nip young stems in winter, so cage it low for two years and keep mulch thin near the stems so voles do not nest there. It flowers on old wood, so any shaping should wait until just after the early spring bloom.

Male and female flowers grow on separate plants and only females carry berries, so plant three to five seedlings to get both. Swallowtail caterpillars roll the leaves in summer; leave them. In the Southeast, laurel wilt, the disease killing redbay and sassafras, can also strike spicebush; remove any plant that wilts suddenly in summer.