Daphne odora Seeds | Winter Daphne
LATIN NAME: Daphne odora
COMMON NAME: Winter Daphne
Plant Profile
Daphne odora makes a compact, rounded, evergreen shrub of a metre or so, with leathery glossy leaves clustered towards the tips of the shoots and carried all year. The flowers come in terminal heads of a dozen or more, each a narrow tube about a centimetre long opening into four spreading lobes, purplish-rose outside and paler within, and they smell strongest on mild, damp, still evenings.
The leaves are lance-shaped to narrowly oval, 5 to 10 cm long, with a smooth waxy surface that sheds winter rain and a pale midrib standing out against the dark blade. Growth is slow, and a plant ten years in place is barely wider than when it went in.
A form with a narrow white margin to every leaf has been grown in East Asian gardens for so long that it is often treated as the type, and it is the plant most gardeners mean by winter daphne. The pale edge lights up a shaded corner in winter, and a yellow-edged form exists as well, more vigorous but coarser in a small space.
The genus has one of the most distinctive chemical signatures in the plant kingdom, to be handled with respect rather than curiosity.
Bark, leaves, sap, flowers and the fleshy fruit all carry the diterpenes, and the load is heaviest in the bark and the seed. Drying does not make the plant safe, and a mouthful of berries has caused serious illness in small children. Pruning requires gloves and sleeves, and the trimmings should not be burnt in a confined space or put through a shredder that will spray sap.
Science & Biotechnology
The characteristic Daphne compounds are daphnane diterpene orthoesters, with daphnetoxin and mezerein among the best known and the mezereon of European woods as the classic source. They are fierce irritants: sap on skin raises a red blistered rash that can take weeks to settle, and chewed bark or berries burn the mouth and throat. Mezerein is also a recognised activator of protein kinase C and has been used as a pharmacological tool alongside the tumour-promoting diterpenes of the spurges.
Uses & Benefits
Much of the winter daphne sold in the trade is grafted onto the rootstock of the mezereon, and those plants inherit the mezereon’s vigour along with its tendency to fail suddenly. A plant on its own roots is slower to bulk up but lives longer and will not throw suckers from below the graft that must be rubbed out every year. The usual reasons a mature daphne dies in one season are a wet root zone in winter, root disturbance, virus infection that shows as mottled leaves, and simple old age.
Growing from Seed
The shrub wants what a woodland edge provides: shelter, shade for part of the day and soil that never sits wet.
Put winter daphne where you will walk past it in February, on a slope or beside steps so the flowers are at nose height, and give it dappled shade and a position out of the strongest morning sun, which scorches the foliage after frost. The soil should be humus-rich, lime-free and sharply drained, and the roots resent disturbance, so leave the plant alone once it is in.
Daphnes are grown from cuttings far more often than from seed, but a fresh lot of seed is worth handling carefully if you have it.
Seed is set sparingly in cultivation and loses its power to sprout if it is dried hard, so sow it fresh on the surface of a gritty, lime-free compost, covered with 3 mm of fine grit and kept cold and moist through the winter in a frame. The roots are brittle, so prick the seedlings out at the two-true-leaf stage, handling them by a seed leaf rather than the stem, and pot them straight into deep containers. Plant out small, in spring, and do not firm the soil around the collar.
Our Take
Winter daphne rewards patience more than skill, and I would not be without it in a garden with acid soil and a shady corner. If the winter scent is what you want but the soil is wrong, the lilac daphne is a tougher relative that flowers on bare wood in spring, and a winter jasmine will give you colour on the same wall with none of the toxicity. For a scented tree in the same season, the Japanese apricot is the traditional companion. Buy a small plant, put it where the air is still, and let it do the rest.
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