It is always exciting when someone presses into your hand a little home-made envelope containing a few unfamiliar seeds. Occasionally the seed in these parcels produces something magnificent, as it was with this plant. A tower of the delicate foliage typical of the genus, with a maroon sheen to the stems, is topped by a cloud of small creamy-white flowers. The plant is dioecious, that is to say there are staminate (male) flowers and pistillate (female) flowers on separate plants. The female flowers are tightly-clumped like a miniature hamamelis flower; the male flowers more open and, for me, more attractive. It grows to 1.75 tall and needs moist soil in part shade.