A deciduous shrub of graceful habit, with glabrous, wiry, zigzag branches, forming a dense, rounded bush ultimately 3 to 5 ft high (rarely taller), sending up sucker growths freely from the base; sometimes a spreading, mounded bush only 2 ft or so high. Leaves triangular in the main, truncate or heart-shaped at the base, tapering to a slender apex, 11⁄2 to 3 in. long, somewhat less in width at the base, the margins cut into deep lobes, the lobes toothed; stipules linear, toothed, 1⁄4 in. long. Flowers greenish white, 1⁄5 in. wide, crowded on panicles 1 to 3 in. long and terminating short side-twigs from the previous year’s shoots; stamens ten.
Native of Japan and Korea; introduced to Kew, in 1872, by way of St Petersburg. It has proved quite hardy, and is now generally cultivated for the beauty of its handsomely cut, fern-like foliage, and for the brown of its naked stems and branches in winter. The finest specimen I have seen is in Lord Annesley’s garden at Castlewellan, which some years ago was 8 ft high and more in diameter – an exceedingly elegant bush. The flowers appear in June, but have little beauty.
cv. ‘Crispa’. – Of procumbent habit, rooting at the nodes and spreading widely, eventually about 2 ft high. Leaves rather more deeply incised than normal, crisped when young. Raised in Denmark and introduced to this country in the late 1950s. A useful ground-cover, but not suitable for very dry soils. The leaves turn orange in the autumn. Forms of S. incisa no taller than this have long been cultivated.