A deciduous or, in mild winters, nearly evergreen shrub, 12 to 20 ft high, occasionally taking the form of a small tree, of dense habit, rounded or flat-topped; twigs covered with a short, dense, brownish down. Leaves pale green, thin, elliptic, elliptic-oblong, or lanceolate, 1 to 3 in. long, 1⁄2 to 1 in. broad, tapering at the base, acute to bluntish at the apex, downy on the midrib beneath; stalk 1⁄8 to 1⁄4 in. long. Flowers white, produced in July in numerous downy panicles, 3 or 4 in. long, 11⁄2 to 2 in. wide. Fruits globose, black-purple, about 1⁄6 in. diameter, remaining on the branches until after the New Year.
Native of China; introduced by Fortune about 1852. I consider this the best and most ornamental of deciduous privets. It bears immense feathery masses of blossom in July, and they are usually followed by a wealth of dark purple fruits about the size of large shot, which make the shrub interesting through the winter. It is never seriously injured by cold, although in hard winters the twigs are occasionally cut back. Still, a sheltered position for it is preferable to one bleak and exposed, as it grows and flowers better then. It is now naturalised in parts of Australia and of the USA.
cv. ‘Multiflorum’. – This privet was grown by E. A. Bowles at Myddleton House, Enfield, as “L. ovalifolium multiforum” under which name he described and figured it in My Garden in Summer, pp. 284-285, and in Gard. Chron., Vol. 50 (1911), p. 237 and fig. 109. He received it from the nurseryman George Paul, who found the original plant in France growing in a hedge of L. ovalifolium and bought it for ten francs. It seems to have been, in fact, a floriferous form of L. sinense with reddish-brown anthers, and appeared in the first edition of this work (1913) as L. sinense var. multiflorum. It is possibly the same as the L. sinense floribundum, for which Paul had received a First Class Certificate in 1885.
var. stauntonii (DC.) Rehd. L. stauntonii DC. – Leaves oval or ovate, usually blunt at the apex and mostly less than 2 in. long. Panicle broader and less dense. Described by de Candolle from a specimen in Lambert’s herbarium, collected during Lord Macartney’s Embassy to China in 1793. Wilson later found it in W. Hupeh and W. Szechwan, where it grows 6 to 12 ft high. The privet described by Carrière as L. chinense var. nanum is probably a dwarf form of this variety.
cv. ‘Variegatum’. – Leaves variegated grey-green and white.