Meetings with plants: small-leaved myrtle

Bramble & Briar #126

The eminently clippable small-leaved myrtle, crying out for a clip. Or at least, for multiple cuttings to be taken. Quite likely, both

When it comes to plants, I do like a survivor. Just as well, considering how frequently my horticultural attentions are liable to bring something to the brink but, at least in the case of the small-leaved myrtle I wasn’t to blame. But firstly, the name. Here, it’s just “the myrtle”, because we have no big-leaved myrtles from which to differentiate it, though that’s another story. Well, since you’re already here, I might as well...

I was once kindly gifted a sprig of that most famous myrtle, a scion of the plant at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight from which the myrtle in the wedding bouquets of British royalty is traditionally snipped. I proudly planted the thing in the garden; an act for which it repaid me by expiring in short measure. Disappointing. On reflection, such refined and blue-blooded flora probably expected considerably more attention paid to it than being shoved into a flower bed and left to get on with things. Perhaps I should have grown it on in a pot till it was more of an established specimen. So much for the royal myrtle – its smaller leaved cousins arrived here a year or so later, and have shown no sign of such a haughty and tenuous grip on existence. Quite the contrary.

While we’re still on the subject, I do feel that the common name is more than acceptable, since the botanical nomenclature Myrtus communis subsp. tarentina ‘Microphylla’ is just too much of a faff to wield unless absolutely required and, short of the annual meeting of the International Myrtle Fanciers Society¹, I can’t thank of many situations where such a mouthful would be.

It’s not called small-leaved myrtle for nothing. Sausage fingers for scale

If you’ve not met a myrtle², let me describe what you’ve been missing. A dense, evergreen bush with cinnamon coloured stems clothed in glossy, elegantly pointed deep green leaves which, on a warm day or, when crushed, under cooler conditions, release a richly herbal and resinous scent. The form, the foliage and the perfume would be sufficient excuse to populate the garden with at least one of the things, but there are flowers, too – creamy white ones emerging from red buds from mid- to late-summer, a curiously harmonious combination of serenely soft petals surrounding an explosion of long white stamens. Tiny starbursts against a backdrop of deep, dark, green sky. Followed by blue-black berries. And you can have such a wonder in your garden as feature up to 3 metres high and around, or on a smaller scale, that barely reaches your knees. We have the latter, though now, having written that, I’m seriously considering having another go with the standard size.

The thing about the small-leaved myrtle, as you’ve probably guessed, is that the compact size and the closeness of the leaves makes them eminently clippable, and who wouldn’t want soft, green and glossy, fragrant pebble shapes dotted about the place? It’s not something I could ever resist, though it must be acknowledged that the urge to clip needs to be set against the desire for flowers, since you’ll often be snipping off the blooming buds. Myrtle, I’ve noticed, will take pity on you, and reward you anyway with the odd blossom, just not quite as generously as had you left her entirely alone.

It was all going so well until that really cold winter a couple of years ago, where it got down to minus ten (for us here in the soft south eastern corner of the UK, that’s cold). Every myrtle blackened, and I thought I’d lost the lot, but slowly (very slowly in some cases), the wizened sticks began to leaf up again, and my ridiculous optimism was rewarded. I’ve still not clipped them quite as hard as I’d ultimately like to, but we’re getting to the point where that’s becoming a distinct possibility. And in the meantime, I need to take a lot of cuttings.

The flowers have gone over a little early this year

1. I don’t know if such a group exists, but if it doesn’t, I think we should set one up. Who’s in?

2. Ok, one more thing on the name. ‘Myrtle’ is clearly the name of a chicken, and a particularly silly and characterful example of the species at that. Can’t you just picture her clucking about the place and scratching at the ground? Quite how it got appended to this glorious shrub I’ll never know