Tamarix parviflora
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Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
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'Tamarix parviflora' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
A shrub or small tree to about 15 ft high, with usually arching branches; bark of second-year wood brown or purplish brown. Leaves sessile, acute, about 1⁄10 in. long, with colourless margins, not much widened at the base. Racemes 1 to 2 in. long and a little less than 1⁄4 in. wide, borne on the wood of the previous season; bracts slightly longer than the pedicels, green at the base, the upper part translucent and more or less stained with purple. Petals light rosy pink, spreading, about one-twelfth of an inch long. Stamens four, inserted on the lobes of the disk and separated by shallow sinuses; anthers pink.
Native of the Aegean and the Balkans, possibly of N. Africa. From all other cultivated species except the rare T. tetrandra it is distinct in flowering from the old wood and in having flowers with four stamens. It is a shrub of great beauty and grace, admirable in masses.
In the commonly cultivated form of T. parviflora the racemes are densely flowered and also densely arranged on the branches; they are mostly up to 11⁄2 in. long, a few to 2 in. In another form, grown as T. tetrandra, they are longer, laxer and rather more widely spaced.
T. parviflora does not inhabit saline soils in the wild and has become naturalised in some parts of S. Europe outside its natural range, and in N. America.