I never heard of Clethra either, but it was on Nadia's list, so they kept popping up. I was very involved with what I thought was going to be an impressive photo of this Clethra delavayi and the whatever are these bugs on three of the flowers in the third photo, but Nadia insisted that I come look at what she wanted to show me, which was this whole inflorescence with a bug for every flower. These flowers were a big hit for these bugs. This is Clethra barbinervis. Nadia figures this is a Clethra, in the native garden, but we didn't find the label.
Today we found what I hope is a new sign, or newly placed one, right in plain view in front of the plant, saying Clethra barbinervis. That would make it the same as the second row in that first posting. The leaves look very different to me, but I see on google that there's a huge variation in the leaves for plants with that name. But still we have a plethora, because we found (or paid attention to) a new one today - Clethra alnifolia. It looks like the last one might have pink flowers. We only found one sign, but I think these are all the same. There were several of these plants.
The last is the most prevalent one in gardens and nurseries. However, C. barbinervis is more elegant.
Here's a fourth one: Clethra acuminata. We saw this one on August 28, still with a few flowers, but mostly fruits. Here are fruits now on the C. barbinervis in the Asian Garden (first photo), with much nicer leaves but not as cute as the same species in the North Garden (second photo, from August 28), with its curved petioles. And these are the fruits on the C. alnifolia. It had several racemes that appeared distinctly blue, seemingly dried up flowers that did not set seed. I just read that "Clethra" is Greek for "alder" and "alnifolia" means alder-like leaves. Seems like a bit of overkill in the naming. There are at least two more we have to find. Nadia thought we saw one yesterday, but we couldn't find the tag and then she started to wonder if maybe it wasn't.
