Pronounciation: La-GUS-trum ja-PON-i-cum

Hardiness zones
Sunset 4-24
USDA 7 (with cold protection), 8-11

Landscape Use: Informal hedge plant, background, screen, small multiple-trunk patio tree, filler plant, containers, accent.

Form & Character: Upright and rounded, dense, formal, old fashioned, a landscape dinosaur.

Growth Habit: Evergreen, woody, perennial broadleaf shrub, moderately upright and rounded to 15-feet tall with equal spread. Can be maintained at 5- to 6-feet tall.

Foliage/Texture: Leaves are thick, glabrous, waxy, ovate and slightly recurved downward toward the apical tip, opposite, to 4-inches long, prominent mid vein, prominent stem lenticels; medium texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Small, white flowers in terminal panicled clusters, musty smelling (in a granola hippy way); fruits small, black, waxy globose to 1/4-inch long, clustered.

Seasonal Color: White flowers in late spring (usually May).

Temperature: Tolerant of Phoenix cold, but not tolerant of the extreme Phoenix heat unless placed in a mesic landscape design.

Light: In Phoenix, partial is sun best. Always avoid western sun.

Soil: Some chlorosis in wet alkaline soils, well drained.

Watering: Regular water throughout the year.

Pruning: Best pruned in early to mid summer after bloom. Can be pruned in any manner. Which means of course that the 'Horticultural clods of Phoenix' (aka 'Hort clods') will shear Japanese privet into large olive green orbs. Sometimes sheared as a large topiary.

Propagation: Seed, however softwood cuttings will root under mist rather easily.

Disease and Pests: Root rot pathogens, especially Texas root rot, scale, spider mites.

Additional comments: In Phoenix, Japanese privet was once a popular, dependable filler plant for mesic landscapes. This 'old-fashioned' large shrub was once part of the influx of landscape plants brought to Phoenix from California wholesale nurseries prior to the 1980s and the blossoming of the Arizona wholesale nursery industry, but today is relugated to the dustbin of 'has been' landscape plants that are not deemed 'sustainable' by local civic environmental policy experts. Today however, it's still popular and widely seen in landscapes across the southern half of the United States from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans.

Taxonomic confusion: Japanese privet has many named cultivars and is often confused with Ligustrum ovalifolium.