Photo: Agnieszka Kwiecień, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped · Wikimedia Commons

White Fringetree

Scientific name: Chionanthus virginicus

Also called old man's beard, grancy graybeard.

Clouds of fragrant white fringe in May, then blue fruit for the birds, on a small tree for any yard.

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Saplings ship in a pot, usually 12 to 18 inches tall, in the dormant season, and their height and age are stated here with the price, once available.

We grow it as saplings and seed. One email when it is listed with prices, and nothing else. Or ask, and we reply with what is ready now. Live plants ship February to May and October to November.

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Showy flowersWildlife valueTolerates wet soilWinter interestStreet tree

Type: Small tree
Mature height: 12–20 ft
USDA zones: 3–9
Growth rate: Slow
Flowers: May
Fruit: Berries, July to September
First crop: Several years (first flowers)
Mature spread: 20 ft
Sun: Full, Part
Soil moisture: Average, Wet
Grows wild in: Stream banks, the forest understory and rich moist slopes
Native range: 22 states and the District of Columbia, north to New York, south to Florida and west to Texas
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Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia
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Fringetree is one of the most beautiful and least used native small trees, hardy to zone 3 despite a southern reputation. It blooms late enough to dodge frost, tolerates wet soil and city conditions, and asks nothing beyond sun. Female trees carry dark blue fruit in late summer; plant a few for a chance at a male and a female. Even a sidewalk tree pit along a street suits it, and in winter the bark shows scaly dark brown ridges and red furrows. Belongs in a small city yard or a courtyard, planted in threes if you want the fruit.

Size, growth and what to expect

White fringetree adds only 6 to 10 inches of new growth a year, a little under the foot a year our growth estimator models for a slow tree. In a yard it grows 12 to 20 feet tall and as wide, and a wild tree can reach 30 feet. It can live more than 50 years.

Fleecy clusters of fragrant, strap-like white flowers 4 to 8 inches long open in May, and male trees carry the showier flowers. Some trees carry both male and female flowers. Only the females set the olive-like fruit, about a half inch long, which ripens dark bluish black from July to September. Songbirds and small mammals eat it. Old man's beard, its other name, comes from the resemblance of those fringed flowers to a white beard.

It grows wild from Massachusetts and New York south through the Southeast to Texas and west to Missouri, in rich, moist woods, on stream banks and on rocky bluffs and glade margins. It does not stand prolonged drought.

How to grow White Fringetree

White fringetree grows in full sun or light shade, in ordinary soil or ground that stays wet, and tolerates city conditions. It stays small, so 8 feet from the house is plenty. Set trees 12 to 24 feet apart.

Saplings ship potted. Plant while dormant. Fringetree has coarse, fleshy roots that regrow slowly, so plant it small and keep the root ball intact. Set it in a hole twice its width, flare at grade, with the native soil back in and mulch off the trunk. No stake. Seed has a double dormancy: sow it outdoors in fall under a mouse screen and expect seedlings the second spring.

Water every week for the first two summers. Deer browse fringetree and rabbits gnaw the bark, so tube or cage it for three years. It needs no pruning; if you shape it, do so right after bloom, since flowers form on old wood.

Fringetree leafs out very late, and a bare tree in April is not dead. Most trees are male or female and only females bear fruit, so plant several seedlings; a tree shows which it is at first bloom, which can take several years. It is in the olive family and emerald ash borer attacks it, so watch for D-shaped exit holes.

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

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