Pterostyrax hispidus

The fragrant epaulette tree is a deciduous tree of twenty to thirty feet in most gardens, spreading and open in habit, and the performance comes in late spring and early summer when long panicles of small white flowers hang from the ends of the branches and scent the air around the tree. Dirr's Manual of Woody Landscape Plants puts the case plainly: "the flowers are extremely handsome and develop when a limited number of plants are offering color." That timing is much of the value. By June most of the flowering trees have finished and the garden has gone green, and this one is only starting.

This is the second of the two epaulette trees we grow, and the pair make an instructive comparison. Both hang their flowers in fringed drooping panicles, which is where the common name comes from, the resemblance being to the fringed shoulder boards of a dress uniform. Where the little epaulette tree, Pterostyrax corymbosus, is smaller in every dimension, this species is the larger and heavier-flowered of the two, with panicles that can run to nine inches. The genus name comes from the Greek pteron, a wing, and styrax, for the related storax, and the wing refers to the fruit; the epithet hispidus means bristly, for the small ribbed fruits that follow the flowers covered in stiff hairs. So the two species are named for two different features of the same curious little fruit.

A correction to our own older listing, since we would rather fix a thing than repeat it: this species is native to both China and Japan rather than to Japan alone. Pterostyrax belongs to Styracaceae, the storax family, which also holds the snowbells and the American silverbells, Halesia. There is no ethnobotanical tradition worth reporting, no medicine, timber or food use of consequence. Bees work the panicles hard while they last, which in a June garden is a genuine service.

Plant the fragrant epaulette tree in moist but well-drained soil, in full sun for the heaviest flowering, and give room for a spreading crown. As with the smaller species, think about the sightline before planting: these panicles hang, so a position above a path, at the top of a slope, or where the tree can be looked into from a deck repays far more than the same tree set flat where the flowers end up overhead. Shelter from hard wind. Hardy through USDA zones 5 to 8. Prune in late winter only to shape the young frame, and be patient, since a young tree takes a few years to settle into heavy flowering.

Photos courtesy of Arb O'Retum and Owen Johnson