Probably most of the people reading this would not confuse these two flowers, but we saw the Rehderodendron macrocarpum first thing today, and I wondered how I would know it wasn't Staphylea. Well, now I know, and it's not just that I can photograph the first and hardly ever get a photo of the latter in focus. For starters, Rehderodendron have simple alternate leaves. The flowers have five petals, very tiny green sepals, and according to Wikipedia, they are produced in cymes of four to eight together. The Staphylea pinnata, aside from being much less densely covered with flowers, has opposite compound leaves. "The flowers are produced in drooping terminal panicles 5-10 cm long, with 5-15 flowers on each panicle; the individual flowers are about 1 cm long, with the five sepals and petals similar in size and in their white or pale pink colour". (Wikipedia)
