A shrub or small tree to about 20 ft high in the wild, the young shoots, the undersides of the leaves and the inflorescence parts all covered with a whitish stellate down. Leaves up to 31⁄2 in. long, ovate, often broadly so, and sometimes heart-shaped at the base, entire. Flowers white, borne in June in short terminal clusters of three to eight; they are fragrant, about 11⁄4 in. wide, recalling those of an orange-tree; segments of the corolla six to eight, narrow-oblong, very downy. Calyx with very short teeth. Fruits globose, 3⁄4 in. wide, with the remains of the style at the top and the persistent woolly calyx beneath. Bot. Mag., t. 9653.
Native of the E. Mediterranean and the Near East, with a western limit in S. Italy; naturalised in Italy around Bologna and in France in the department of Var. This beautiful and interesting species has been cultivated in Britain since the end of the 16th century, when Gerard had two plants in his garden ‘the which I have recovered of the seed’. It is not a tender species, but coming from a region of hot and dry summers it needs the extra heat of a south or west wall to ripen its wood thoroughly; in areas where summer temperatures and sunshine are above the average it should succeed in a sheltered spot in the open ground, provided it is not bloated by overfeeding.
The fragrant resin known as ‘storax’ is obtained from this shrub by wounding the stem and used to be imported in small pieces, ‘storax in the tear’, or in larger, masses ‘storax in the lump’. It was used medicinally as an expectorant, and there were also made from it ‘sundry excellent perfumes, pomanders, sweet waters, sweetbags, sweet washing-balls, and divers others sweet chains and bracelets.’ Storax was also used as incense, and it is recorded that the dust cast up by the boring of an insect which attacks the wood was used in Greece for the same purpose.
var. californica (Torr.) Rehd. S. californica Torr. – It is remarkable that this Californian styrax differs so little from S. officinalis that some botanists refuse to give it even varietal rank. See further in the article with Bot. Mag., t. 9653.