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Styrax japonica Sieb. & Zucc.

Modern name

Styrax japonicus Siebold & Zucc.

Synonyms

S. serrulatum sens. Hook. f. in Bot. Mag., not Roxb.

A small deciduous tree, 10 to 25 ft high, rarely taller, of very graceful habit; the branches slender, sometimes drooping; young shoots at first furnished with scattered tufts of down, which soon fall away. Leaves usually oval, tapering about equally at both ends, 1 to 312 in. long, 12 to 112 in. wide, but occasionally obovate or even roundish, margins set with minute, shallow, distant glandular teeth, dark glossy green above, glabrous on both surfaces except for tufts of down in the vein-axils; stalk 13 in. or less long. Flowers pure white, perfectly pendulous, 34 in. in diameter, borne on short lateral shoots carrying about three leaves and three to six blossoms; each flower on a glabrous slender stalk, 1 to 112 in. long. Corolla of five pointed divisions, which are united near the base, 58 in. long, downy outside. Calyx glabrous, funnel-shaped, 16 in. long, persisting at the base of the roundish, egg-shaped fruit, which is 12 in. long. Flowers in June. Bot. Mag., t. 5950.

Native of Japan, China and Korea; introduced to Kew by Richard Oldham in 1862. It is a small tree of singular grace and beauty, very hardy, but preferring a sheltered spot and one, if possible, shaded from morning sun, for the flower-buds and the young shoots are liable to injury by late spring frosts. It should be given a light loamy soil to which either peat or leaf-soil, or both, have been added. Apart from its susceptibility to late frost, especially in low-lying situations, it is one of the most desirable of all hardy trees of its type, and amply repays the trouble of preparing a suitable medium for the roots, if that does not already exist.

The first introduction to Britain from China was by Wilson, who sent seeds to Messrs Veitch early this century; plants from this source were distributed when the nursery stock at Coombe Wood was auctioned after the winding-up of Messrs James Veitch and Son, which took place in the autumns of 1913 and 1914 (many of Wilson’s introductions first reached gardens through this sale). But the plants known as “S. fargesii” or S. japonica “var. fargesii” derive from seeds sent by Père Farges in 1898, probably from N.E. Szechwan, to the Vilmorin collection (Les Barres seed-number 1901). The plant acquired by Kew from Vilmorin in 1924, as S. japonica fargesii, was presumably a seedling of one of the originals at Les Barres; another, from the same source, flowered at Nymans in Sussex in 1934 (J. Comber in New Fl. and Sylv., Vol. 6 (1934), p. 121); a third tree from Vilmorin grows in Collingwood Ingram’s garden at Benenden, Kent, and this received an Award of Merit when exhibited by him on May 29, 1945. The description of S. japonica var. fargesii in the R.H.S. Dictionary of Gardening appears to have been based on the Benenden tree. Finally, it should be mentioned that two trees received at Kew as S. japonica fargesii came from Messrs Lemoine in 1926.

It is likely that many of the taller and larger-leaved trees of S. japonica grown in British gardens are of Chinese provenance, but even in Japan the species is variable, and it would be impossible to deduce the origin of a tree from its foliage or flowers.


Genus

Styrax

Other species in the genus