Snowdrop Tree, a name given to shrubs or small trees of the genus Halesia, on account of the pure white pendulous flowers, which have also suggested the equally common name of silver-bell tree. Halesia belongs to the storax family, and is a genus of two or at most three species, which have large, veiny, pointed, deciduous, alternate leaves without stipules; the flowers, in clusters or short racemes, open just as the leaves appear, from axillary buds of the previous year; the small calyx is four-toothed, its tube cohering with the ovary; petals four, united at the base or to the middle, forming a bell-shaped corolla; stamens 8 to 16, more or less united at the base; ovary two- to four-celled, becoming a large, dry, bony, two- to four-winged fruit with one to four cells, each of which contains a cylindrical seed. The best known species is the four-winged snowdrop tree (H. tetraptera), so called from the four wings to the fruit; it is found from Virginia southward; it sometimes reaches the height of 50 ft., but is more generally much smaller; the bark is dark-colored, marked by light fissures, which give it a characteristic netted appearance; the ovate-oblong leaves have glandular petioles, are 2 to 4 in. long, and finely serrate; the flowers have four-lobed corollas, nearly an inch long, with 12 to 16 stamens distinctly united below the middle.

This tree is quite hardy in the northern states. The two-winged species (H. diptera) is more southern, and is found from the Carolinas southward; the larger leaves are coarsely serrate; the flowers are larger than in the preceding, and consist of four nearly distinct petals, and the 8 to 12 stamens are nearly distinct; the fruit, which is about an inch long, has only two wings; the tree does not grow so large as the other. This species is quite rare and difficult to find in the nurseries, forms of the preceding being confounded with it. Michaux described a third species, H. parviflora, which seems to be nearly unknown, if indeed it be not a form of one of the others. The trees are raised from seeds, which, unless sown as soon as ripe, lie in the ground a year before they germinate.