Tea Olive

Cannot imagine a garden without Osmanthus Fragrans. The fragrance is divine!

Wonderful! It's always great to have fragrant plants in our gardens.

Beautiful!

greenappleagnes said:Tea Olive

Cannot imagine a garden without Osmanthus Fragrans. The fragrance is divine!

I could not agree more! Good job on the banner!

Very nice banner. Hope to see a lot more. Is this a flower or fruity scent?

Lovely banner Casey!

Great banner Casey!

I am amazed at how much I have learned just by looking at banners. This is a new plant for me; and I am glad to see it. Thanks Casey.

Thank you @plantmanager, @Marilyn, @flaflwrgrl, @Fleur569, @kniphofia, @crawgarden, @TBGDN!!!

Ann, it sounds like you have these too. Yes? Aren't they lovely?!!

Tea Olives are plain evergreen shrubs. Throughout the year, these itty-bitty, teeny-tiny white flowers appear with the most delightful fragrance. The flowers are so tiny, no one really believes that lovely scent comes from them - and that it travels so far. Our neighbors enjoy the scent as though they were planted in their yards. We have 14 planted at our current house, and a number of them at our property.

I'm not quite sure how to describe the fragrance. I looked it up online and others describe it as citrus, apricot and peach.

While poking around I came across this article:
https://charlestonmag.com/feat...

They make a lovely evergreen hedge. I'm hoping because of their dense limb structure I can use them to protect some of the garden from the deer at our property. The first ones we planted (in 1999) grew about 20' tall before we pruned them, so the deer should not be able to jump them or go through them. (That's my hope!)

Fleur, here's the full size pic:



Leon, I agree! This has been a great source for finding new plants.

for a great banner, Casey

@greenappleagnes
Yes, Casey, I have 2 at present. I 1st learned of these & fell in love with them in the early 80's when I lived west of Tallahassee & worked for a landscaper. They were commonly called Tea Olive, at least that's all I ever heard them being called. Then I moved back to the Palm Beach/Martin County areas & you could not find them there. No one had them, no one seemed to have ever heard of them.

Here, where I now live, they are more commonly called Sweet Olive rather than Tea Olive. Still -- Osmanthus fragrans.

Someone asked about the fragrance. I think the tea in the common name best describes it (to me). It has a tea leaf fragrance running among the sweet fragrance. I find it a quite unique combination. This isn't just SWEET - it's more than that & the tea scent moderates the sweet scent in such a way as to prevent the sweet from becoming overwhelming, sickening, make you gag sweet, because make no mistake about it, these blooms have a powerful, powerful scent. You do not need a lot of them in order to saturate your yard with beautiful scent.

Thank you @GaNinFl!

Ann - thank you for the great response! I find the same thing here, no one knows what they are. It amazes me landscapers in the area don't use them more. And your description of the scent is perfect. Sweet, but not sugary. This past season was the most prolific blooming season yet. (I think it was related to all the rain we received.) There were so many blooms and the ground below was a blanket of white. It was wonderful.

Oh! And thank you to all for the thumbs up!!!