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Resources < Wildlife Habitats < Native Plants < Native Plant Database < Lindera benzoin
Because spicebush is dioecious, you’ll need both a male and a female plant to produce fruit. But make room in your garden for this handsome couple and you can expect to attract the likes of great-crested flycatchers, eastern kingbirds, veeries, white-throated sparrows, and red-eyed and white-eyed vireos. Over 20 bird species relish spicebush’s big, bright red, high-fat, fragrant drupes.
Though most people plant spicebush for its showy, bird-friendly fruit, the fruit is just one of many reasons to include this lovely large shrub in your landscape. Spicebush also offers aromatic leaves and twigs, lemony fall color, and dainty yellow flowers in early spring. The flowers, which are petal-less and spicily fragrant, appear before the leaves in delicate, branch-hugging clusters. Picture golden halos.
Spicebush is easy to grow. It takes well to soils that are moist, fertile, and well drained. Spicebush is especially effective at the edge of a woodland garden or planted along a stream or creek. A larval host plant for spicebush and tiger swallowtails, this shrub also makes an excellent addition to the butterfly garden.
Lauraceae (Laurel Family)
Large deciduous shrub with 3 to 5", dark green, oval-shaped leaves. Yellow flowers appear in spring before the foliage. 3/8" glossy red drupes ripen in late summer. Fall leaf color is yellow.
6-12’ high and wide.
Tends to be dense and rounded in full sun and looser and more open in shade.
Slow to medium.
Full sun to part shade.
Plant in moist, fertile, well-drained, acid soil.
Assets include aromatic leaves and twigs, clusters of small spicy yellow flowers in spring, and fragrant red fruits in late summer.
Plant in the shrub border or woodland garden or along a stream or pond.
Larval host plant for spicebush and tiger swallowtails. Fruits are eaten by over 20 species of birds.
Found along streams and ravines and in moist locations in bottomlands and valleys in the Piedmont and mountains.
Softwood cuttings, layering, stratified seed.
Text and photo by Leslie Kimel, Georgia Wildlife Federation
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Spicebush
