Looking lovely in December are the Japanese Laurels of the genus, Aucuba. If you’ve hung around any southern gardeners, you already know that we often have some peculiar pronunciations. I’m from the south and still remember thinking, whaaat, the first time I heard someone talking about the A Coobers in their garden. Perhaps many folks were simply born poor and couldn’t afford a wide array on consonants, so to compensate, they add them when speaking…especially r’s.
Aucubas naturally come in male, female, and bisexual forms. The females and bisexuals (hermaphroditic) have the beautiful fruit in winter, the former of which requires a nearby male. New flowers will follow around Valentine’s day. Most aucubas are winter hardy from Zone 7a/b south, but some from colder regions can thrive into Zone 6. This is a dwarf cultivar, Aucuba japonica ‘Wisley Nana’.
In linguistics that’s called a post-vocalic “r”.