Meliosma veitchiorum Seeds | Veitch’s Meliosma

Veitch's meliosma with large pinnate leaves and a wide panicle of tiny white flowers — Veitch’s Meliosma (*Meliosma veitchiorum*): Sabiaceae, a Chinese mountain tree with the largest leaves in its genus.

LATIN NAME: Meliosma veitchiorum

COMMON NAME: Veitch’s Meliosma

Plant Profile

Veitch’s meliosma is a tree that most gardeners have never seen and would remember if they had. It grows to about twenty metres in its Chinese mountain home, with a stout trunk and a broad, open crown, and its leaves are among the largest in the genus: odd-pinnate, with seven to nine leaflets, each leaflet up to fifteen centimetres long, glossy above and softly hairy beneath.

The whole leaf can be half a metre long, and it gives the tree a coarse, almost tropical look that seems out of place in a temperate wood, which is exactly why collectors want it. In early summer it produces terminal panicles, thirty centimetres or more across, of tiny white flowers, and from a distance the effect is of a cloud of pale froth sitting on the branch tips. The fruit is a small drupe, red turning black, with a single stone.

Science & Biotechnology

Meliosma is one of the genera that plant geographers use to argue about, because its species are scattered across East Asia, the Himalayas, Central America and northern South America in a pattern that makes no sense unless the group is ancient. The family Sabiaceae is small, and its position among the flowering plants has moved more than once as molecular data accumulated.

Veitch’s meliosma itself is a Chinese endemic of the western mountains, and it was named for the Veitch nursery, whose collectors sent it to Europe in the nineteenth century. The flowers are functionally bisexual but protandrous, shedding pollen before the stigma of the same flower is receptive, which encourages cross-pollination by small bees and flies. The fruit is dispersed by birds, and seedlings appear in the wild mainly in light gaps and on disturbed ground.

Uses & Benefits

This is a collector’s tree rather than a garden fixture, and it is grown for the drama of its foliage and the oddity of its flowering. The leaves give it a presence in summer that few hardy trees match, and the panicles, though not showy in the way of a flowering cherry, have a soft, insubstantial quality that reads well against dark woodland.

It needs shelter and space and does not appreciate being crowded, so it belongs at the edge of a wood or as a specimen on a lawn. The wood is soft and of no commercial value, and there is no significant medicinal record for the species, which is part of its appeal: it is grown for what it is, not for what it can be sold for. In a collection of unusual trees it is one of the quiet highlights, and it becomes more interesting the longer it is watched.

Growing from Seed

Seed is short-lived and should be sown as soon as it is ripe or stratified over winter. Clean the flesh from the drupes, mix the seed with damp perlite, and hold it cold for eight to twelve weeks, then sow thinly in a peaty, lime-free mix at about eighteen degrees.

Germination is erratic and can take three months; keep the pot shaded and never let it dry out. The seedlings are slow for the first two years and need filtered light rather than full sun, since the large leaves scorch easily when young. Plant out into deep, humus-rich, reliably moist soil in a sheltered position, and mulch well for the first three summers.

Our Take

A connoisseur’s tree with enormous leaves and a strange, ancient lineage; not for the impatient. Few gardens have it, and those that do tend to plant a second one.

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