The name Trichocladus is derived from the Greek, trichos, meaning hairy or hair-like and klados, meaning branches or shoots, referring to the hairs on the young shoots; and grandiflorus means large-flowered, describing its large showy flowers.

Trichocladus grandiflorus was first collected by Mr Chris Mudd who sent seeds to a British nurseryman, Mr Veitch in 1883. It was illustrated in Curtis's Botanical Magazine from plants that flowered for the first time in the Temperate House at Kew Botanical Gardens in July 1894 (view the plate on Aluka.com). The botanist, Burtt Davy also made mention of this plant and its lovely flowers and red-brown new growth after seeing it flowering in the Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga) in the early years of the 20th century. Despite this species being a most handsome and easily cultivated ornamental tree it remains as little known to most South Africans today as in the time of Chris Mudd and Burtt Davy.

It earned the common name wild peach because when it is in full flower the tree is almost completely covered with white flowers and is leafless, and resembles a flowering peach tree.

The Hamamelidaceae contains ± 30 genera and 100 species with a scattered, relict distribution in the temperate and subtropical regions of both hemispheres, and has the greatest diversity in eastern Asia. There is only one genus in Africa, namely Trichocladus, which contains three species in southern African and two species in eastern tropical Africa; one genus in Madagascar, Dicoryphe; and three Australian genera Ostrearia, Neostrearia and Noahdendron.

The family has very ancient origins, appearing soon after the first known angiosperms. The earliest Hamamelidaceae fossils are found in Europe, North America and China dating from the Late Cretaceous (100-65 million years ago) and it is thought that the group appeared on the ancient continent of Laurasia during the Early Cretaceous (145-100 m.y.a.) or possibly even earlier. The five Hamamelidaceae genera of the southern hemisphere share two unique characteristics that set them apart from their northern hemisphere relatives, and could result in them being separated into a new family: their anther thecae open by a single valve that serves both pollen sacs and they occur exclusively on land that was formerly part of the ancient continent of Gondwana. They are thought either to have spread via island connections between the separating landmasses of Laurasia and Gondwana; or they could have spread into India, Madagascar and Africa after the Indian plate collided with the Eurasian plate during the breakup of Gondwana; or the ancestor was already present in Gondwana in the Upper Cretaceous or earlier, before Laurasia and Gondwana split, but there is no fossil evidence to support any theory.