Description

Shrub. Twigs weakly angular, slender, tips sub-densely scaly, glabrescent with age. Leaves mostly 3 together in tight pseudowhorls. Blade 80–140 x 30–50mm, narrowly ovate to elliptic, broadly elliptic to slightly obovate, sometimes with slightly unequal sides; apex acuminate and acute to obtuse; margin flat; base narrowly tapering; glabrescent above when mature, laxly stellate-scaly beneath. Scales thin, irregularly dentate, flat; centre small, faintly impressed. Mid-vein slightly impressed above, prominent beneath; lateral veins 8–12 per side, dense, curved and anastomosing before the margin, obscurely impressed above, raised beneath, reticulation inconspicuous on both sides. Petiole 8–10 x 1.5mm, laxly scaly. Flower buds to 60 x 20mm, imbricate, ellipsoid, smooth. Bracts to 30 x 18mm, ovate to broadly obovate, scaly and shortly hairy outside in the distal ½ and shortly hairy in the distal ½ inside, with longer appressed hairs proximally. Bracteoles to 30mm, filiform, laxly hairy. Inflorescence compact, 8–12-flowered, the flowers erect or semi-erect. Pedicels c.2–4 x 1.5mm, scaly. Calyx c.2.5mm diameter, obtusely 5-lobed. Corolla trumpet-shaped, probably white; tube 45–60 x 3–4 x c.11mm, cylindrical, straight, practically glabrous outside, hairy almost to the mouth inside; lobes c.20 x 15mm, broadly elliptic or obovate, glabrous. Stamens exserted to 14mm, clustered on the upper side of the flower before collapsing irregularly; filaments linear and densely patently hairy in the proximal ½, gradually glabrescent distally; anthers c.4 x 1mm, oblong, base obtuse. Disc shortly hairy on the upper side. Ovary 8–10 x 1.7mm, cylindrical, densely covered with long, appressed, distally directed hairs with some scales between them, gradually tapering distally; style c.40mm, laxly covered with hairs for the proximal 2/3, glabrous distally; stigma shortly broad-obconical, indistinctly 5-lobed.

Rhododendron oreadum Wernham

Description

Distribution

Altitude

Habitat

Nomenclatural History

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