What a joy it is to be here once again in South Carolina's dreamy, seductive Low Country -- here amidst the live oaks, the magnolias, the Spanish moss and the welcoming palmetto trees.
And let's not forget the vivid crepe myrtle.
Crape myrtle is a flowering tree with multiple large, showy flower particles in electric colors that sizzle across the branches-pink, purple, red-violet, and white. Crape myrtle is a broad-crowned deciduous tree that is variable in size, averaging about 20 to 25 feet, but potentially taller. Dwarf forms are also available.
In these parts, crepe myrtle is almost as abundant as kudzu -- and it's a lot prettier.
Often multistemmed, crepe myrtle has smooth, sculptured gray bark that gently exfoliates, showing multishaded underbark. The bark looks almost petrified. But the tree is very much alive, especially this time of the year.
Dappled shade allows for the growth of complementary ground covers beneath its leaf canopy. The petals are crinkled, like crepe paper, and appear recurrently through the warm-weather months.
The Common Crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) from China and Korea, was introduced circa 1790 to Charleston, South Carolina, in the United States by the French botanist Andre Michaux. In the wild the species is most often found as a multi-stemmed large shrub, but two hundred years of cultivation has resulted in a huge number of cultivars of widely varying characteristics. Today it is possible to find crape myrtles to fill every landscape need, from tidy street trees to dense barrier hedges all the way down to the ast-growing dwarf types.
Crepe myrtle is just one of the reasons to visit beautiful Hilton Head and environs.
The others?
Well, stay tuned . . .
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