Fortune's Tea Olive
Osmanthus × fortunei · Oleaceae · 은목서
How to spot it
Identified by leaf dimorphism (young leaves with spiny teeth, mature leaves smooth), strongly fragrant white flowers in fall, and rare fruiting.
Look
- Leaves
- Leathery, glossy simple leaves, dark green above and paler beneath; young leaves have triangular spiny teeth, while mature leaves become smooth-edged.
- Flowers
- White four-lobed flowers under 1 cm across open from late summer to fall with a strong, sharply sweet fragrance.
- Fruit
- Being a hybrid it rarely fruits; if it does, the fruit is a bluish purplish-black drupe 1 cm or less.
- Bark
- The stem is angular and gray with many brown lenticels.
Where it grows
- Native to
- Thought to be a hybrid of Osmanthus fragrans and O. heterophyllus, made in Japan before the mid-19th century and brought to Europe.
- Ecology
- Tolerates alkaline soil, air pollution and partial shade.