Vitex trifolia "Variegata" Fred Heutte pounding the leaves into pastes

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

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

but humans have moved the plant for so long that a clean point of origin is essentially impossible to recover

from Mississippi and Georgia down into Florida

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

Vitex trifolia "Variegata" Fred Heutte pounding the leaves into pastesA 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