Loropetalum R.Br. ex Rchb.

A genus of five species in East Asia, of which two were not described until the 21st century. Loropetalum is often compared to its well-known close relative, Hamamelis (witch hazel), with which it shares the spidery, tassel-like flowers that emerge very early in the season.

The recognition of the genus was a drawn-out process. It first appeared in the West as a dried specimen collected by Sir James Cunningham on the island of Chusan and sent to Leonard Plukenet, who described and illustrated it in his Amaltheum Botanicum (1705) using a polynomial (Arbuscula sinensis…). Over a century later, Clarke Abel collected it near Nanjing, Jiangsu, in 1816, but the material he aimed to bring home was lost when the ship he sailed on, HMS Alceste, was shipwrecked on an uncharted reef in Indonesia and for good measure burnt by Malay pirates (JSTOR Global Plants 2013). Though Abel survived, the precious plant material did not. He had fortunately left some specimens with Sir George Staunton in China before embarking on the ill-fated voyage, and these were subsequently safely delivered to Abel in London. They were described by Robert Brown in 1818. Among them was a specimen that Brown matched to Cunningham’s plant illustrated by Plukenet. Brown described it as Hamamelis chinensis, mentioning in an observation that perhaps it was distinct enough from H. virginiana to merit being separated into its own genus and tentatively suggesting the name Loropetalum for it. For some authors (e.g. Zhang, Zhang & Endress 2003), this constitutes valid publication, but for most (e.g. POWO 2025) it does not, and in their view the genus name was not validly published until 1828, when Reichenbach included the name Loropetalum R.Br. in a list of genera. Though he included no other information, this is deemed sufficient to validate the name by indirect reference to Brown’s 1818 diagnosis. De Candolle, however, in 1830 still listed the taxon as Hamamelis chinensis, parenthetically mentioning that Brown had proposed the genus name Loropetalum. For many years, the genus did not include any validly published species, as Hamamelis chinensis did not become Loropetalum chinense until 1862, when Daniel Oliver, in a paper read at the Linnean Society, provided a generic diagnosis for Loropetalum to confirm its separation from Hamamelis. He did not mention the new species name in the text, but the publication of his paper included an illustration of the anthers of H. virginiana (as H. virginica) and L. chinense, showing one of the key diagnostic features of the genera. As the name of the plant was included in the caption, it was finally validated.

A second species was added in 1883 when Tetrathyrium subcordatum, originally described from Hong Kong by Bentham in 1861, was moved by Oliver to Loropetalum. Bentham had described the new species (and genus) based on a specimen from which the petals had dropped. He misinterpreted this as a sign that the petals had been replaced by gland-like scales. Oliver was able to examine a specimen with flowers and concluded that Tetrathyrium was congeneric with Loropetalum. Some authors continued to distinguish Tetrathyrium based on differences in petal number and other floral features, but Feng et al. (1999) determined that these characteristics do not warrant generic distinction and that T. subcordatum is better placed in the genus Loropetalum. Loropetalum subcordatum is only known from four populations in Guizhou and Guangdong provinces and is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List (Meholic 2019; World Conservation Monitoring Centre 1998. Qian (1994) described T. simaoense from Simao, Yunnan, with 5-merous flowers, but Feng et al. (1999) found that 4-merous and 5-merous flowers coexisted in the same inflorescence in the type specimens, while other characters (habit, leaves, fruit) are similar in T. simaoense and L. chinense. They therefore reduced T. simaoense to synonymy under L. chinense.

A third species of Loropetalum was described as L. indicum by K.Y. Tong in 1930 from the Khasia Hills in Maghalaya (at the time, Assam), north-eastern India. Feng et al. (1999) found that the differences in leaf structure on which Tong based the species were not sufficient to distinguish it. They found it difficult to find any difference between the type specimens of L indicum and L. chinense, and so determined L. indicum to be a synonym. Boyce (2001) agreed that there are no readily discernible differences in the various fertile characters of L. indicum and L chinense, and suggested that L. indicum is best treated as an tree-like manifestation of L. chinense. Handel-Mazzetti described another species in 1932, L. lanceum, a moderately sized tree, 9–13 m tall, found in southeastern China. It is distinguished from other species in the genus by its glabrescent, lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate leaves (Meholic 2019). Another species was described in 1959: L. subcapitatum Chun ex Chang, said to differ from L. chinense in its larger, glabrescent leaves. Feng et al. (1999), however, concluded that small leaves are also found on specimens of L. subcapitatum and that leaf size ranges continuously from one species to the other. They noted that the L. subcapitatum specimens had been collected in well-preserved forest and that their larger and glabrescent leaves are an adaptation to a humid habitat. They thus added L. subcapitatum to their list of L. chinense synonyms. Boyce (2001) disagrees, referring to L. subcapitatum, together with L. lanceum, as considerably larger trees that differ from L. chinense in a number of important floral and fruiting characters. POWO (2025) sides with Feng et al. and includes L. subcapitatum in the synonymy of L. chinense

Recently, two more species of Loropetalum were described: L. flavum from the Bat Dai Son Mountains in northern Vietnam (Averyanov et al. 2018), a tree 5–10 m tall with yellow flowers, and L. axillare from Guangdong, China, (Jin et al. 2023), which is distinguished from L. chinense by its axillary flowers and absent peduncle.

Loropetalum chinense is the only species in cultivation and has proved popular in horticulture worldwide, spawning a plethora of cultivars, or at least cultivar names, particularly in the United States. It is discussed in detail under its own entry.

The name Loropetalum derives from Latin lorum (= ‘thong or narrow strip of material, such as leather, with parallel margins, often used as a fastening’; the plural lora refers to the reins of a bridle) and Ancient Greek πέτᾰλον (pétălon), the root of ‘petal’. The name refers to the straplike flowers. Many references give the derivation as from ancient Greek λῶρος (lôros = ‘thong’), but this was a borrowing from Latin (wiktionary.org 2025; Eckel 2021; Lewis & Short 1879).