There’s a little native shrub growing in our damp woods that never, EVER, gets eaten by the deer. Just in case you’ve missed me bashing on about it in the past, the white-tailed deer are a menace here in north east Pennsylvania, eating wildflowers and native tree seedlings with equal enthusiasm. But Kalmia angustifolia, sheep laurel, is never eaten.

This little relative of the well-known mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia, the state flower of Pennsylvania, only grows about 38cm/15in in these parts but can apparently reach 90cm/3ft or even 1.8m/6ft. Its pretty clusters of flowers are grouped all round the stem but are only about 12mm/0.5in across. It runs gently at the root to make wide, open stands of rather sparse evergreen ground cover under our oaks and maples.

It’s a shame it’s not a little more colourful. But not only are the flowers small, but they open under tufts of new foliage so that as you look down on the low-growing plants the flower clusters tend to be hidden. There are half a dozen named forms, in various colors, listed on the University of Connecticut website (scroll down) but they’d have to be a lot better than the wild form to tempt me.

Often cited as poisonous to sheep and cattle – hence one of its other common names, lambkill – it is not, apparently, actually poisonous to deer but they seem to leave it along anyway. They eat the mountain laurel, K. latifolia, which is regularly browsed to about 1.5m/5ft, and almost everything else.

What we need, perhaps, are hybrids between deer-resistant K. angustifolia and deer-favourite K. latifolia to give us flamboyant shrubs the deer won’t eat. If only it were that simple. Such hybrids  have, in fact, been created when pollen from K. latifolia was used to pollinate K. angustifolia and 2000 seedlings germinated from almost 10,000 seeds. Almost all the seedlings were weak and died. If the white form of K. angustifolia was used then more seedlings survived but their main ornamental feature was the bright yellow young growth.

Well… perhaps I should try to get hold some of those taller forms… or perhaps in the garden with better soil and few doses of liquid fertilizer iwild plants will make more impressivespecimens. But, out in the woods, at least it’s a pretty plant to break up the dominance of the two ferns the deer don’t eat – the hay-scented fern, Dennstaedtia punctilobula, and New York fern, Thelypteris noveboracensis.

Fore more on Kalmia angustifolia, sheep laurel, and creating hybrids see Kalmia: Mountain Laurel and Related Species by Richard A. Jaynes.