Sweetshrub, Calycanthus
floridus L., has additional common names of Carolina allspice, strawberry shrub (perhaps due to the developing fruit to at one point resemble the fruit of strawberries), and bubby
bush. The later is possibly a delicate
corruption of booby bush because the aromatic flowers were used in perfume sachets
that were worn on a lanyard around the neck with the pouch resting between boobies. At least that was what I was told by the only
other authority to have heard this common name.
The aroma increases with the warmth of body temperature thus if a flower was put in an inside pocket on a cool day then it would smell it better a little later. The flowers have many petal of such a dark reddish purple that they can appear brown. A
cultivar without this pigment has yellow flowers similar to the color of the
leaves in autumn. There are a couple other species: western sweetshrub, C. occidentalis Hook. & Arn., found through California to Washington, although seemingly absent in Oregon, and Georgia sweetshrub, C. brockianus Ferry & Ferry, indigenous to Georgia.
