Azara celastrina D.Don

Azara celastrina is rarely encountered in cultivation and its exact date of introduction is not entirely known. Surprisngly, there is no mention of its introduction from Chile in the 19th century horticultural literature, but it is worth noting that its distribution overlaps in seven regions of Chile with that of A. dentata which was introduced as early as 1830. It is therefore surprising that collectors such as Thomas Bridges, Hugh Cuming, Andrew Matthews, John Gillies, William Lobb and others, who were active in these regions, did not introduce seed of A. celastrina. We note that there are numerous herbarium specimens of Azara celastrina deposited at RBG Edinburgh (E), RBG Kew (K) and the Natural History Museum (BM) which represent material of these notable collectors and one of which, collected by Bridges (Bridges 40), consists of a fruiting plant, but the only documented living plants that we are aware of came through a series of RBG Edinburgh field trips undertaken between 1993 to 2013.

From five separate accessions, plants were distributed to the Cornish gardens of Chyverton, Trebah and Trewollack as well as Torbay Parks in Devon, Nymans in West Sussex and in Scotland plants went to Mount Stuart (Isle of Bute) and Torosay Castle (Isle of Mull) (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 2025). RBG Edinburgh’s records show that only the plant sent to Mount Stuart (19931705*I, Gardner & Knees 5690) survived, albeit winter damage took its toll. In order to rescue the plant it was lifted and potted after which it was placed in a cool glasshouse (G. Alcorn pers. comm. 2025). From this plant cuttings were taken and now there are many plants ready to be distributed to gardens with mild winter temperatures. The accession was collected from the Region of Coquimbo on the banks of the Río Quilmari at 180 m above sea level. The only plant of A. celastrina that we have managed to find growing out of doors in the UK is one planted by the glasshouses at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. It is a low growing, spreading shrub to 0.6 m having been damaged by the low winter temperatures of December 2022 (P. Atkinson pers. comm. 2025). The plant was sourced from The National Botanic Garden of Wales in 2003 who obtained seed from The National Botanical Garden Viña del Mar, Chile but it has no exact provenance details. From this same source, NBG Wales have a small tree growing in the Great Glasshouse. Clearly A. celastrina requires very mild winter conditions and will only survive one or two degrees of frost.