Snowbells flower upside down, and that is the whole charm of the genus. In late spring the white bells hang beneath the branches on long, slender stalks, each one waxy and five-lobed around a little brush of yellow stamens, so the show is best seen from below, looking up through the canopy. Styrax gives the storax family, Styracaceae, its name, and the Asian members of the genus are the old source of benzoin, the fragrant resin of incense and perfumery. The trees in a garden are quieter about their scent, though several are sweetly fragrant in bloom.

Styrax japonicus, the Japanese snowbell, is the best known: a small tree of 20 to 30 feet from Japan and China, with a layered, horizontal habit and grey-brown bark fissured with orange-brown in winter. Styrax obassia, the fragrant snowbell of Japan, Korea and Manchuria, makes a bolder tree with round leaves four to eight inches long and flowers carried in drooping racemes four to eight inches long, highly fragrant and sometimes half hidden by the foliage. Closer to home, Styrax americanus, the American snowbell, is a native shrub of 6 to 10 feet from Southeastern swamps, marshes and stream banks, sweetly scented, worked over by bees and butterflies, and a host plant of the Promethea silkmoth. The bigleaf snowbell, Styrax grandifolius, is its woodland cousin.

Site the Asian species where you can walk beneath them: over a bench, beside a path, at the edge of a terrace. They want moist, acid, well-drained soil, sun to part shade, and steady water through a Southern summer, since heat and drought are their weak points. The American snowbell is the answer for wet ground, a rain garden, or the edge of a pond, where few flowering shrubs are as graceful.

The listings here include records of snowbells we have grown in the past as well as the plants on the bench now. Read the full field guide, The Quiet Bells of Styrax, find more small flowering trees among our Canopy Trees, more natives in Southeastern Natives, and further Japanese introductions in Origins: Japan.