Hovenia tomentella (Makino) Nakai

Within this uniform genus, Hovenia tomentella stands apart as the hairiest species; dense reddish to yellowish wool covers much of the inflorescence, including the peduncles and pedicels of the fruit (the parts that swell and become tasty), a feature which slightly compromises the species’ edibility to humans at least. The leaf can also be densely woolly underneath, making it thicker in texture and distinctly bicoloured (Nesom 2023); however, this is not a consistent feature, and, within the species authors such as Chen & Schirarend (2007) distinguish ‘H. trichocarpa var. robusta’, with almost hairless leaves. The varietal combination has not however been made within H. tomentella, which is the specific name recommended by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2024) because it was published (by Takenoshin Nakai in Japan) about a month before the name H. trichocarpa was published by Woon-Young Chun and Ying Tsiang in China (Nesom 2023). Only the form with near-glabrous foliage has a natural range that extends north as far as central Japan (Chen & Schirarend 2007).

Its relatively northern distribution suggests that Hovenia tomentella should be fairly hardy, but it remains exceedingly rare in cultivation. A tree collected in Japan in 1996 grows at Belmonte Arboretum in the Netherlands, where it flowers freely and has a made a healthy tree about 6 m tall (Belmonte Arboretum 2024). Another, also belonging to the form with near-glabrous leaves, was accessioned at the J.C. Raulston Arboretum in North Carolina in 2012 but seems to have been forgotten about until the summer of 2024, when it was successfully planted out as a spindly and very pot-bound 3 m plant (J.C. Raulston Arboretum 2024; Paige 2024).