Southern Wax Myrtle (Morella cerifera)
Southern Wax Myrtle (Morella cerifera)
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Southern Wax Myrtle
Morella cerifera
Other Common Names: Wax Myrtle, Southern Bayberry
Top Pick: A versatile evergreen Texas native that provides excellent screening, cover, nesting structure, and fruit for birds while adapting to a wide range of landscape conditions.
Quick Plant Info
- ☀️ Light: Full Sun to Part Shade
- 💧 Water: Medium
- 🌿 Type: Evergreen Shrub / Small Tree
- 📏 Mature Size: Approximately 10–20 ft tall × 8–15 ft wide
Plant Traits
Description
An evergreen native built for birds, screening, and year-round landscape structure.
Southern Wax Myrtle is a large evergreen shrub or small tree with dense, aromatic foliage and an adaptable growth habit. It can be allowed to develop naturally as a multi-stemmed shrub, planted in groups for screening, maintained as a hedge, or trained into a small tree.
Its combination of evergreen foliage and wildlife value makes it particularly useful where a landscape needs both habitat and year-round structure.
🐦 Built for bird habitat
Southern Wax Myrtle provides several resources birds can use in the same plant. Its dense evergreen branches offer cover and potential nesting structure, while female plants can produce clusters of small, waxy blue-gray fruits that are eaten by many birds.
The foliage also supports native caterpillars and other insects, adding another food-web connection for insect-eating birds and nestlings.
🫐 About the fruit
Southern Wax Myrtle has separate male and female plants. Female plants require a male plant within pollination distance to produce a good crop of fruit.
Unless plants are sold as known male or female selections, individual plants should not be purchased with guaranteed fruit production in mind.
🌿 Why it works
- Evergreen foliage provides year-round structure
- Excellent cover and nesting habitat for birds
- Female plants produce fruit used by birds
- Supports native caterpillars and insects
- Useful for screening and privacy
- Can be grown as a large shrub or trained as a small tree
- Tolerates pruning and can be maintained as a hedge
- Adaptable to sun or part shade
🌱 Where it thrives
Southern Wax Myrtle is adaptable but performs particularly well where it receives adequate moisture and has room to develop. It tolerates both full sun and part shade.
- Wildlife gardens
- Privacy screens
- Evergreen hedges
- Property boundaries
- Woodland edges
- Large native shrub plantings
Soil: Adaptable to a range of soils and can tolerate both periodically moist and relatively dry conditions once established. Best growth generally occurs with consistent moisture and reasonable drainage.
✂️ Growth & maintenance
Southern Wax Myrtle responds well to pruning and can be maintained as a hedge, allowed to develop into a dense multi-stemmed screen, or selectively limbed up to create a small tree form.
Give plants adequate room if a natural form is desired. Regular pruning will be necessary when maintaining them substantially smaller than their mature size.
💧 Water (establishment note)
Water regularly during establishment. Once established, Southern Wax Myrtle is adaptable and can tolerate periods of dry weather, although supplemental water during prolonged drought supports fuller growth.
Pickup Information
Order online and select a pickup time at checkout. Plants are held for your scheduled pickup window.
