Exbucklandia populnea

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.

The flowers are a modest affair, small and reddish, gathered in little rounded heads and easy to overlook; the foliage is the whole show. Broad, deep green, and evergreen, the leaves flutter in the wind like an aspen's and flush bronze in cool weather, giving the tree a lush, almost tropical look uncommon in a hardy evergreen. In the mountains of southern China and the eastern Himalayas where the tree grows wild, the wood is valued for timber, but in the garden the draw is purely ornamental.

Native to the montane forests of southern China, the Himalayas, and mainland Southeast Asia, Exbucklandia is virtually unknown in Western gardens, a genuine collector's tree and one Woodlanders was among the first to offer in the United States. Serious plantspeople have sought the tree for years, drawn by the bold foliage and the botanical curiosity of a witch-hazel relative that looks like a poplar. Slow and evergreen, the tree makes a striking, uncommon addition to a mild-climate garden.

Grow Exbucklandia populnea in part shade to sun in moist, fertile, well-drained, acid soil, sheltered while young, in a climate no colder than about zone 7b. Give room, since the tree grows large in time, and site where the bold, poplar-like evergreen leaves can be appreciated as the centerpiece they deserve to be. For the collector who wants something almost no one else can grow, few trees are as quietly astonishing.