Plants for Readers: Crepe Myrtle

For those who love to read and who wish to incorporate plants mentioned in their favorite books into their own Gulf Coast gardens, I offer this first installment in what I hope will be a series of posts on plants that appear in iconic works of Southern Literature.

Today: The Crepe Myrtle.

Crape Myrtles are easy to find in many local
gardening centers on the gulf coast, and may
be found online. (Photo Source.)

from All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren:

"The house was set up close to the road, with a good hog-wire fence around the not very big yard, and with some crepe myrtles in bloom the color of raspberry ice cream and looking cool in the heat in the corner of the yard and one live oak, nothing to brag on and dying on one side, in front of the house, and a couple of magnolias off to one side with rusty-looking tinny leaves. There wasn’t much grass in the yard, and a half dozen hens wallowed and fluffed and cuck-cucked in the dust under the magnolia trees. A big white hairy dog like a collie or a shepherd was lying on the front porch, a little one-story front porch that looked stuck on the box of the house, like an afterthought."

Crepe myrtles are popular in my region of Texas for their showy displays of flowers in the spring.


Links on varieties and care of Crepe Myrtles:

• "Crepe Murder"
• Aggie Horticulture: Top Eight Crepe Myrtle Cultivars
• Southern Living's "Grumpy Gardener"
• Floridata: Lagerstroemia indica