Long after the seeds of Poliothyrsis have been dispersed by the wind, the empty capsules, with their gaping teeth at either end, remain on the plant well into the winter months, lending decorative interest with their unusual form.

[6] Poliothyrsis bears a marked resemblance (particularly in its foliage) to Idesia, another monotypic genus belonging, (as also do the familiar Poplars and Willows) to tribe Saliceae of the family Salicaceae.

As the RHS points out, Poliothyrsis differs from Idesia in the following three points: The genus name Poliothyrsis is of Greek derivation, being composed of the elements πολιός (polios), meaning "light grey", "grizzled" or "silvery" (employed usually in reference to human hair) [7] and θύρσος (thyrsos) meaning "stalk" or "wand" (or, in a botanical sense, panicle),[8] juxtaposed to give the apt description "bearing silvery (or bright) flower clusters".

[13] Its native range is North-Central, South-Central, and Southeast China, where temperate climates of various subtypes prevail (Köppen climate classification group C)[1][3] P. sinensis occurs in evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved mixed forests and deciduous broad-leaved forests on mountain slopes or at the foot of mountains, growing at altitudes of 400–1500 m.[3] Although frequently used in landscaping projects in its native China,[15] the plant is not yet common in cultivation in Europe and the U.S.A., despite its merits - which are acknowledged as considerable by Jonathan Damery of the Arnold arboretum, who describes the plant in glowing terms as “ show-stopping”, a potential “garden celebrity” and having “elegance”, “class” and a praiseworthy “lack of gaudiness” in its restrained beauty.

[15][18] In the year 1969 pioneering French chemotaxonomist Victor Plouvier published a paper in which he recorded his isolation of a new crystalline glycoside from P. sinensis, which he had duly named poliothyrsoside.

[19] However, only a year later, in 1970, H. Thieme published another scientific paper in which he demonstrated that poliothyrsoside was in fact chemically identical to the glycoside nigracin,[20] first isolated and characterised from the bark and leaves of Populus nigra , the black poplar, by himself and his colleague R. Benecke in 1967.