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Styrax dasyantha Perkins

Modern name

Styrax dasyanthus Perkins

A deciduous shrub or small tree, the young branchlets furnished at first with reddish brown down, becoming glabrous. Leaves almost sessile, obovate to broadly oval, 2 to 4 in. long, 112 to 3 in. wide, tapered more or less at the base, pointed, the upper part minutely toothed, the lower surface at first covered with tufted hairs but almost glabrous by autumn. Flowers white, 12 to 34 in. long, produced in July in slender terminal racemes 2 to 4 in. long, augmented by clusters of two to four flowers in the uppermost leaf-axils; pedicels 14 to 12 in. long, felted. Calyx cup-shaped, 14 in. long, felted outside, with several short but unequal, pointed teeth. Corolla-segments lanceolate, covered outside with tufted, yellowish white down.

Native of Central and Western China; discovered by Augustine Henry in Hupeh and introduced by Wilson from W. Szechwan in 1900. Although an attractive species, it is not in the same class as S. hemsleyana, from which it differs, among other characters, in its glossier, shorter leaves. There is some doubt as to the identity of this cultivated form, which differs from the type of S. dasyantha (the Henry specimen from Hupeh) in its larger flowers, fewer in each inflorescence, and comes near to the Himalayan S. serrulata Hook. f., which is probably not in cultivation.

There has been some confusion in gardens between S. dasyantha and S. japonica, but the latter has fewer flowers in a laxer inflorescence and its pedicels and calyx are glabrous.

var. cinerascens Rehd. – Branchlets and undersurface of leaves more densely and persistently downy. Introduced from the Lushan Botanic Garden in the 1930s as S. philadelphoides, but not the species described under that name by Miss Perkins. Some plants under this erroneous name, and possibly from the same source, are more glabrous and better called S. dasyantha simply.


Genus

Styrax

Other species in the genus