Scientific: Myrtus communis
Common: common myrtle
Family: Myrtaceae
Origin: Southwest Asia
Pronounciation: MIR-tus com-MU-nis
Hardiness zones
Sunset 8-24
USDA 8-11
Landscape Use: Low edging, formal hedge to small multiple-trunk tree. A versatile plant with many landscape uses that are mostly cultivar specific. Ergo, know your cultivar differences!
Form & Character: Highly versatile ranging from low, dense and mounding to upright, arborescent, spreading and pendulous, clean, Mediterranean, sensual. The shedding, cinnamon-brown trunk is very attractive.
Growth Habit: Evergreen, woody, broadleaf perennial shurb or small tree, moderate growth rate to variable sizes ranging from 3- to 15-feet tall with equal or greated spread. Dwarf cultivars grow as low as only 3-feet tall. In contrast, the straight species is upright and spreading to 15-feet tall with a somewhat greater spread.
Foliage/Texture: Medium green, glabrous, simple leaf, lanceolate and sessile to 1-inch long, distinctly aromatic; fine to medium fine texture.
Flowers & Fruits: Small, cream-white flowers arising from axillary flower buds followed by small bluish-black, drupe-like fruits that look like elongated blueberries in the fall.
Seasonal Color: Common myrtle produces a plethora of small, cream-white flowers in April to May.
Temperature: Very tolerant of Phoenix heat and cold hardy to 20oF. Will occassionally show reddening of foliage during colder Phoenix winters.
Light: Partial to full sun, no shade.
Soil: Soils must be well drained! Iron chlorosis on leaves will manifest when growing in highly alkaline, wet soil conditions, and I don't recommend use of common myrtle if the soil pH is above 8.3. If chlorosis occurs because of high soil alkalinity, then regularly treat with elemental sulfur and use NH4+ or urea forms of nitrogen fertilizer to help lower soil pH.
Watering: Common myrtle is surprisingly drought tolerant in Phoenix, but will respond best to regular though not frequent deep waterings.
Pruning: Common myrtle responds well to any type of pruning. Large specimens may be trained into beautiful, multiple trunk small trees with amazing cinnamon-colored, twisted trunk patterns; whereas, dwarf cultivars can be sheared with great success into any number of different formal shapes by experienced or even inexperienced 'Horticultural clods of Phoenix' (aka 'Hort clods').
Propagation: Cutting or seed.
Disease and Pests: Rare outbreaks of spider mites during the summer are the only biotic problem this plant ever seems to have in Phoenix.
Additional comments: One of the more serviceable and versatile shrubs
in Southwest landscapes for mesic landscape designs. Common myrtle makes a great formal hedge plant (hint, hint for all you 'Hort clods' who like landscape loaves of bread, boxes, beer kegs or bowling balls).
Some landscape cultivated selections include:
Ethnobotanical notes: Myrtle is the perfect firewood. The bark and roots are used to tan the finest Turkish and Russian leather to which it imparts a delicate scent. Common myrtle has many uses and has a rich middle eastern, Biblical tradition.
"Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead
of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree." - Isaiah 55:13
