Pittosporum

Pittosporum tobira, often called Japanese mock orange or tobira, is a dense evergreen shrub valued for handsome foliage, sweet fragrance, and toughness. Leathery dark-green leaves are arranged in neat whorls at the branch tips, giving a tidy, layered look.

In late spring, clusters of small creamy-white flowers release a powerful orange-blossom scent that perfumes the surrounding area. Variegated forms like 'Variegata' and compact 'Wheeler's Dwarf' are especially popular.

Adaptable to sun or shade, salt, drought, and shearing, pittosporum is a workhorse hedge and screening shrub in warm, coastal, and Mediterranean climates.

A dense, mounded to upright evergreen shrub.

• Leaves: leathery, glossy, obovate, dark green (or cream-edged in variegated forms), arranged in rosette-like whorls
• Flowers: small, 5-petaled, creamy white aging to yellow, in terminal clusters; intensely orange-scented
• Habit: dense and rounded, 3–12 ft tall depending on cultivar and pruning
• Fruit: woody capsules that split to reveal sticky orange seeds
• Bloom time: late spring

Tough and adaptable.

• Light: full sun to part shade; variegated forms appreciate some shade
• Water: moderate while establishing; quite drought-tolerant afterward
• Soil: adaptable; needs good drainage; tolerates sandy, salty soils
• Temperature: hardy in USDA zones 8–11; tender to hard frost
• Feeding: light spring feeding
• Pruning: tolerates shearing well—ideal for formal hedges; prune after flowering
• Propagation: semi-hardwood cuttings; watch for aphids, scale, and sooty mold

Pittosporum tobira is native to Japan, Korea, and coastal China, where it grows in warm-temperate coastal thickets and woodlands, tolerating salt-laden wind.

Thanks to that coastal toughness, it is widely planted in California, the southern U.S., the Mediterranean, and other mild regions as a hedge, screen, foundation, and seaside shrub.