Great Design Plant: Curl-Leaf Mountain Mahogany, an Easy Evergreen

This native of the U.S. West has a strong presence in the landscape. Evergreen foliage cloaks a large, upright to loosely rounded form that’s perfect as a winter accent, screen or hedge in dry, cold climates. It’s a nice alternative — especially in smaller landscapes — to more common pines and spruce. Versatile and with little to no maintenance required, curl-leaf mountain mahogany is an unsung and underused plant that’s great for modern landscapes and gardens.

Botanical name: Cercocarpus ledifolius
Common name: Curl-leaf mountain mahogany
Origin: Native to the western United States
Where it will grow: Hardy to -40 degrees (USDA zones 3 to 8; find your zone)
Elevation range: 3,000 to 9,000 feet
Water requirement: Low
Light requirement: Full sun
Mature size: 10 to 25 feet tall and 6 to 10 feet wide
Benefits and tolerances: Best features include dense, evergreen foliage and attractive, feather-like seeds; long lived, low maintenance and drought tolerant; tolerates poor soils and wind
When to plant: Spring
Seasonal interest: Very small, yellowish flowers in spring; seed plumes late summer through fall; evergreen foliage


Distinguishing traits. Leathery, narrow leaves are ½ to 1 inch long with margins that curl under, especially during times of extreme drought. The foliage is evergreen — dark and lustrous above, white and fuzzy below — and contrasts nicely with the pale gray to white bark.


The curled, feathery seed plumes are characteristic of the genus; shown here is the closely related but deciduous — note the broader, serrated leaf — common mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus montanus, zones 3 to 8).


How to use it. Curl-leaf mountain mahogany is ideal as a single-specimen accent plant or massed as a screen. Add it to a shrub border with xeric companion plants like Siberian spirea (Sibiraea laevigata, zones 4 to 8, shown), fernbush (Chamaebatiaria millefolium, zones 4 to 8), golden currant (Ribes aureum, zones 2 to 7) and dwarf fragrant sumac (Rhus aromatica ‘Gro-Low’, zones 3 to 8).


Dense branching occurs all the way to the ground, and it may be left natural, sheared as a hedge (as shown here) or pruned to create a small tree form, as in the photo below.


Planting notes. Curl-leaf mountain mahogany prefers full sun but will tolerate a half day of shade. Select a well-drained site with gravelly, rocky or sandy-clay soil that mimics its native habitat. Once established this shrub can go without supplemental water except in prolonged periods of hot and dry weather.

Note: Curl-leaf mountain mahogany is slow growing.

More: What to do in your garden by region

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