Japanese Stewartia.

[badmomma]

This is a beautiful tree for all seasons. This is the sort of thing that makes a boring yard spectacular to view.

Valuable as a specimen tree in the lawn or shrub border, it offers long-term effect in the landscape with its summer flowers, brilliant autumn color and exfoliating bark that provides dramatic winter interest.
Japanese Stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamellia) is perfectly suited to the suburban landscape. In the winter, its beautiful bark and sinewy, muscular trunk and branches create an unbeatable effect. The bark has the look of camouflage gear: smooth with patches of rich gray, tan and terra cotta.
The tree has a pyramidal shape, and young branches have a slight zigzag pattern of growth with small pointy buds at their tips. Its architectural beauty is especially dramatic when the tree is outlined with a fine tracery of snow.
Japanese Stewartia is one of the few trees that bloom in the summer, producing a succession of camellia-like white flowers with gold anthers for more than two weeks in July. In the fall, it dazzles. Its lustrous green summer foliage turns to shades of yellow, red and reddish-purple. It is breathtaking when backlit by the sun.

This particular tree will give you the additional color that you are looking for if you live in an area with what seems to be a particularly long winter. Its quite beautiful but does get quite large. Its mature height is 30 to 40 feet but it has no major pest or disease problems. I give it a thumbs up.

[flippinout]

That is a very pretty tree and if I had more land, I would have one just for the extra splurt of color it would bring to the long miserable winters we have here in Ohio.

Seeing nothing but white when it snows or brown when the snow melts gets old after a couple of months and this tree sure would brighten things up.

Thanks for posting the great pictures of this tree. This way we know exactly how it will look at any given time of the year.