Passalong Plants

Steve Bender and Felder Rushing

University of North Carolina Press, 1993

 “Passalong” plants are defined by authors Bender and Rushing as plants they grew up with in the Southern United States, but that are now hard to find at garden centers. The only way to find some of these plants is to get them from a person who already has the plant in their yard. There are more than two hundred plants profiled in the book.  If you have grown up in the south, many of these plants, such as Tiger Lilies, Snowdrops, Zinnias, Black-Eyed Susans and Naked Lady Lilies (one of my mother’s favorites) will be familiar.

An inset in each plant profile contains good information about that plant:  common name, botanical name, plant type (such as perennial, shrub, etc.), size, hardiness, origin, light, soil, growth rate, and mail-order sources if there are any.

Catchy titles for the profiles describe something distinctive about the plant such as “Not as Tame as the Name” or “Knocking at Your Front Door”.  There are quite a few semitropical plants from the deep south profiled in this book.  Because I have always lived in the mid to northern south, I learned about plants I had never known.

The profiles contain information on how the plant reached the United States and interesting facts about them.  For example, Thomas Jefferson grew Four-o’-clocks calling them the Marvels of Peru, and the authors state that culinary peppers have twice the amount of Vitamin C as citrus fruits.

The authors also have an entertaining sense of humor.  For instance, describing that it takes three months to propagate Lantana from seed Steve Bender writes, “I don’t know about you, but if I have to wait three months for a seed to sprout; it better produce something really special, like a baobab or a man-eating plant.  Three months is just too long to wait for common Lantana.”

The last chapter is a surprise.  It is about Southerners’ fascination with “Yard Art” and includes Artsy Animals, Pink Flamingos, Painted Rocks and Tires, Bottle Trees, and Plastic Flowers.

Lastly, there is a list of mail-order sources and contact information for the plants profiled.  (This book has been reprinted several times. If you think you might order some of these plants, you will want to locate the latest version of this book.)

I know that no gardener can resist a free plant offer or a chance to share their own plants, this is a wonderful book of possibilities.  Enjoy!

Holly Sparrow, Headwaters Master Gardener