Exbucklandia populnea is a rare evergreen tree that fools nearly everyone who meets it. The large, glossy, leathery leaves, sometimes shallowly three-lobed and carried on long stalks, look for all the world like those of a tulip poplar, yet the tree belongs to the witch-hazel family, a kinship few would ever guess. Bold and architectural, with bronze-red new growth and curious upright stipules capping each shoot, this is a foliage tree of real presence.
Pearlbush is named for the week before the show rather than the show itself. Along each slender arching branch, the flower buds swell into round, hard, pure white beads strung out in a line, and for a few days in very early spring the shrub looks convincingly like a plant hung with pearls. Then the buds open into cupped white flowers an inch or so across, six to ten of them to a raceme, and the whole irregular upright frame of eight to ten feet goes white at a point in the year when almost nothing else has started. The plant is sure to attract attention in flower, and does very well in the South, where pearlbush is a dependable herald of spring.
