Right now in eastern North Carolina landscapes, a lovely and underused small, deciduous, ornamental tree or shrub, Vitex agnus-castus, chaste tree, vitex, or lilac chaste tree, is blooming.

Chaste tree has opposite palmately compound leaves with five to seven leaflets. Each leaflet is widest at the middle, longer than wide, gray-green on the upper side and light gray beneath due to a number of fine hairs.

The flowers are arranged in clusters along a spike. Flower color of the species is lilac or pale violet and they occur from June through September. Most blooms have occurred in June and July in the past in the Pitt County Arboretum with some sporadically appearing through September. Since the blooms occur on new growth, old blooms could be pruned off as they fade on small plants to promote new growth and new blooms later in the season.

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