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Tropical evergreen shrubs with willowy, trainable branches long enough to justify the description “semiclimbing,” grown for their glossy foliage and their early-spring presentation of deliciously fragrant flowers. In my good-sized greenhouse one young plant perfumed some 6500 square feet of night air for weeks on end last year. The flowers are tiny, upturned tubes in airy clusters.

Some cestrums are popular in Southern gardens, but are used more as shrubs than vining plants. In the greenhouse they can be grown full and bushy, or trained in espalier effect against a wall or on a trellis. With above-average humidity they should be suitable – and delightfully fragrant – subjects for the large sunny window or sun porch.

Good culture includes: rather coarse soil, full sun, moisture, warmth.

Resting period and pruning are similar to the bougainvillea. Propagate by early spring stem cuttings, or by seeds.

Cestrum aurantiacum – Semiclimber or sprawler with four-inch leaves, orange or yellow flowers.

Cestrum diurnum – day jasmine – White flowers are fragrant all day. This shrub grows to fifteen feet in Florida gardens, tolerates seashore conditions.

Cestrum nocturnum – night-blooming jasmine – Eight-inch leaves are glossy on both sides. Sweet-scented flowers are white or cream, up to an inch long. Ultimate height is about twelve feet. This species flowers at intervals through the year.

Cestrum parqui – Willow-leaved jasmine, slightly hardier, leaves slimmer and more willowy, six-foot height more moderate. Greenish-white or cream flowers are fragrant at night.

Cestrum purpureum – coral jasmine, purple cestrum – The most vine-like of all, to ten feet. Lush four-inch oval leaves and reddish-purple flowers.

Family: Solanaceae