Vitex trifolia "Variegata" Fred Heutte The pale fruit is cool

The pale fruit is cool and luminous

pounding the leaves into pastes laid on aching joints or troubled ears and simmering leaves and young fruit into folk decoctions

holding their ground in the dry rooty shade beneath big trees where most things sulk

from Mississippi and Georgia down into Florida

so a shrub in full bloom reads as a haze of pale lavender rather than a mass of solid color

Vitex trifolia "Variegata" Fred Heutte The pale fruit is coolA brightly variegated cousin of the chaste tree, grown for foliage as much as flower. Vitex trifolia, sometimes called the three leaf chaste tree or Arabian lilac, is a warm climate shrub of the mint family, native along tropical and subtropical coasts from eastern Africa through southern Asia to Australia and the Pacific. The species name trifolia points to the leaves, usually held in threes, and the selection 'Variegata' edges each gray green