Myricaria germanica Desv.

A deciduous shrub 6 to 8 ft high, glaucous grey, and of rather gaunt habit. Branches erect, plume-like, clothed with flat round-pointed, linear leaves, from 1⁄16 to 3⁄16 in. long, glabrous and dotted with glands. Flowers densely set in slender racemes 3 to 8 in. long, which terminate the branchlets all over the top of the shrub; each flower is about 1⁄4 in. long, produced in the axil of a bract longer than itself; petals five, narrow, pink or pinkish white. Stamens ten; seeds feathery.

Native of Europe, Himalaya, Afghanistan, etc.; cultivated in England since 1582. It inhabits river banks, mountain streams, and other sandy, occasionally inundated places, where it often fills the ground over long distances. It is easily propagated by cuttings made of stout wood of the current year placed in sandy soil in the open ground in October. It flowers from May to August.