Right now in eastern North Carolina landscapes, a lovely and underused small, deciduous, ornamental tree or shrub, Vitex agnus-castus, chaste tree, vitex, or lilac chaste tree, is blooming. Chaste ...

The lovely lavender flowers of the chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus), a shrub native to the Mediterranean, produce small, dark fruits (berries) resembling peppercorns. Ancient European herbalists ...

John Gerard, The Herbal, or General History of Plants, 1597. As a preface to this essay, I’ll save you the trouble of looking up “merry-galls” and tell you that they are sores which you might ...

As a nurseryman, I am occasionally asked: “What’s an attractive small tree that grows quickly and has lovely flowers?” That’s a short list, but one very fine candidate is the Mediterranean tree Vitex ...

Vitex chaste trees are beautiful and virtually carefree summer-blooming shrubby trees that attract a wide variety of pollinators. It’s a fast grower that produces dense, upright panicles of flowers, ...

Native to Southern Europe and Central Asia, the chaste tree quickly grows into a multi-trunked shrub 10 to 20 feet tall and wide with a broad, spreading habit. The flowers, upward-growing panicles up ...

Chaste tree (Vitex angus-cestus), also called chasteberry, with its striking lavender-blue flowers which appear on spikes in the fall, is the perfect heat-loving, drought-tolerant addition to an open ...