Mystery Tree

 Hello Valerie,
We were at Langley, Whidbey Island yesterday and we sighted upon this beautiful tree with upside down bunch of white flowers at downtown Langley . It was somewhere inside the little shopping area, beside the Useless Bay Coffee Company. The tree had a lovely bird bath below it. Attached is a picture of the tree.

I have been piqued by this lovely tree and cannot tell what it is. We asked the local garden store lady, the wine shop owner (Nancy) and the sandwich store owner(Sandy) and none of them could help us. I would much appreciate if you can tell me what is the name of this mysterious tree with such lovely riotous June blooms ?

Thanks much,
Uma Raghavan

Dear Uma,
Your mystery tree (photo below) is a Japanese snowbell (Styrax japonica) a graceful little Japanese tree with fragrant flowers in June, just when we're out in our gardens most to enjoy them. It's ideal to grow where you can look up into it to appreciate the flowers that dangle below the branches; above a bench as you describe, or on a hillside (if you can give provide it adequate water on a slope), or in a large raised bed are all ideal. Japanese snowbells need regular summer irrigation, have few or no pests, and grow and flower well in sun or part shade. It's cousin, Styrax obassia, has larger, bolder leaves and is a bigger tree altogether with more presence in the landscape, but less grace than Styrax japonica.

Photo by Uma:

 

Comments

[Karen]

I love these trees but have heard they are a bit messy - dropping their little bells and leaves everywhere and they're hard to rake up. I planted a mini one but haven't watered it enough, I don't know if it will ever get big and bloom as the one you show.

[Carol Hill]

My husband had what I think is a great idea - do you see any problems with this? We have a deep (about 5 feet) roof overhang at the front of the house, and I want to plant below it. It gets no rain. In the summer we can irrigate, but what to do in the winter when it we've turned off our watering system? He came up with the idea of diverting the downspout water from the roof into a perforated pipe buried along that area, underneath the plants. What do you think? Thanks!

[Shirley]

We have this tree and it has been beautiful, and the native bumble bees love it, but every seed will sprout. You need to clean up the leaves & seeds, not use that for mulch.

[Stephen Lamphear]

I have this beautiful tree in my zen entry garden. It's perfuming the entire area right now.

PS -- something may be amiss with the website because all I get is code when clicking on subscribe to the blog.

[valerie Easton]

I'll put my webmaster (my son) onto the problem and we'll get it fixed, thanks for letting me know...
Val

[valerie Easton]

Hi Stephen,
The subscribe link seems to work fine, but here's my son's suggestion if it still doesn't work for you:

"They could try right clicking, picking "copy shortcut," then paste that into the RSS or atom reader they want to use to subscribe to the blog."

Whatever that means...
Val