Imagine a small tree with open, arching branches, the bare branches dripping with long tails of pearl-like buds, and you are beginning to gain some appreciation of the remarkable stachyurus.

The first time you see it, it will stop you in your tracks, asking: what is that? The answer is stachyurus. The botanists who gave stachyurus its name did it no favours, as it is not easy to remember. Incidentally, the name means “pointed-tail”, a reference to the pointed, drooping flower spikes.

This plant is exceptional enough to have its own family, so it is not closely related to any other plant family. If you wish to get some insight on it, you will not find relatives to compare.

However, it does share certain characteristics with some very beautiful plants that might be candidates for being related.

It has dangling strings of small flowers, like those of corylopsis, or witch hazel flowering on bare branches, or a comparison could be made with the catkins of hazel, alder or garrya even. But, while they share the pendent habit, its flowers are different.

They are much more firm, quite stiff and do not dangle softly like catkins. They are formed in summer and autumn and are present on the trees right through winter, resembling a string of small beads, the flower buds waiting to open. When milder weather arrives in spring, the buds open by degrees.

Flowering

Flowering can occur between February and April. The small tree is festooned with flower spikes, each spike up to 10cm, and having 15 to 20 flowers. Each flower is about 8mm or so with four tiny petals and contrasting red bud stem, just like little bells.

The former beads turn into primrose-yellow flowers. The flowers alternate down along the stem, making a lively pattern, particularly against the dark-coloured reddish stem.

The last flowers are produced as the leaves emerge. They break bud in a light green-yellow, the yellow picking up the colour of the flowers – a lovely effect, most notably when seen with sunshine lighting it. Soon the leaves expand and form a pleasing pointed heart-shape. This foliage, hanging pointed tip down, is pretty all summer and may colour to yellow shades in autumn. Though not all trees are reliable, and it can vary year to year.

It is best after a sunny summer, because it is native to the wooded mountains of China and Japan, both countries of greater sunshine and summer heat than here.

The Japanese species, Stachyurus praecox, is most often grown, as it is earlier to flower, the word praecox meaning early. It grows to about 2m each way, making a loose bush. The plants form only a few stems, tree-like, not making fresh growth low down as true shrubs do.

There is also Stachyurus chinensis, a bit bigger, later flowering, and more likely to give good autumn colour. Both of these species are hardy in any part of Ireland and would be ideal plants for a country garden with enough room to allow the bushes not to be cramped. They need plenty of space around them to show them off to perfection.

They like good soil, fertile and well-drained, acid if possible, although they tolerate some lime in the soil. Add plenty of leaf mould.

Try to have the sunlight streaming through the tree against a backdrop of shadow and stop others in their tracks.

Tattered daffodils

It is just the start of daffodil season and usually it is later when flowers are sometimes tattered and spoiled by snails. Slugs can cause damage too, but snails are the usual culprit for this kind of damage. These can be full-size snails or juveniles. Snails are better climbers and able to hide in their shell by day, often being found in the daffodil trumpet. While daffodils are poisonous to grazing animals, and livestock don’t touch them, snails seem unaffected, but they do concentrate on the flowers. Perhaps they are more palatable. There is not much to be done. Pick off the affected flowers if you have time. The best defence is to out-number the snails by having more daffodils. Give the existing ones a feed to increase the rate of bulb division.