Edgeworthia chrysantha

For my birthday, my friends, Myrna and Ed, gave me a new plant: Edgeworthia chrysantha. During the summer, it has lush long leaves. In the winter, the architecture of the plant is revealed as the fleshy trunks are a burnished cinnamon brown. The tiny silky buds appear in winter which tantalize until early spring. The blooms are tiny flowers held in a downward facing truss that is only an inch or so across. Each flower opens yellow and turn to white---pretty enough, but not the reason one craves this plant. A relative of Daphne, it’s the fragrance that is so spectacular as it wafts across the garden.