Description

Shrub or tree to 12m. Twigs 4–5mm in diameter, laxly sub-stellately scaly becoming glabrescent; internodes 4–18cm. Leaves 3–5 together in tight pseudowhorls. Blade 60–120 x 25–60mm, elliptic; apex broadly tapering, obtuse, sometimes rounded or emarginate, occasionally with an inconspicuous apical gland; margin entire, flat or weakly and narrowly revolute; base broadly tapering, the extreme base sometimes truncate or rounded; glabrescent above when mature, laxly scaly beneath. Scales brown, rounded, lobed or sub-stellate, with a broad marginal zone and small centre, slightly impressed. Mid-vein narrowly impressed above, grooved in the proximal 1cm; strongly raised throughout its length below; lateral veins 10–12 per side, spreading, at first straight then curved upwards and anastomosing before the margin, with some additional intermediate veins, faintly impressed above, prominent beneath, reticulation dense, hardly impressed above, raised beneath. Petiole 8–18 x 3–4mm, grooved above, brown-scaly. Flower buds to 45 x 22mm, ellipsoid, smooth, imbricate, with all bracts appressed, and rounded apex, pale yellowish-green. Outer bracts to 30 x 18mm, ovate, with appressed silvery or yellowish hairs which are swollen at the base, along the middle line are some small, brown, scales; inside shortly hairy, and on the margins fringed with brown, stellate scales; inner bracts obovate to spathulate, obtuse to rounded or emarginate. Bracteoles c.20 x 0.5–1mm, filiform, densely white-hairy. Inflorescence of 6–10 flowers in an open umbel. Pedicels 18–27 x c.2mm, densely brown scaly with low, stellate scales. Calyx 4–5mm in diameter, disc-shaped, shortly lobed or rounded with occasionally one lobe up to 4mm, densely scaly outside. Corolla 45–60 x 35–40mm, tubular, pale to deep red, distinctly zygomorphic; tube 35–40 x 7–8 x 12–16mm, curved, densely stellate-scaly outside, hairy with retrorse hairs inside; the three upper lobes 16–20 x 16–18mm, the two lower lobes c.20 x 12–13mm, wide-spreading forming an oblique mouth, sometimes becoming a little reflexed, the three upper lobes overlapping to c.1⁄3, the two lower not or only slightly overlapping, obovate-spathulate, the apices sometimes slightly retuse. Stamens tightly clustered on the upper side of the mouth, exserted to 15mm; filaments linear and densely covered with strong, distally pointing hairs below, more laxly so distally, ultimately glabrous; anthers 4–5 x c.1.5mm, brown. Disc thick and prominent, glabrous below, hairy on the upper margin. Ovary 8–10 x 3–4mm, narrowly ellipsoid, tapering distally, densely hairy and scaly, (the scales completely hidden by the hairs); style thick, densely hairy and with minute scales below, more laxly so above nearly to the top, lying along the upper side of the corolla tube; stigma c.3mm in diameter, obconical, red, positioned just below the mouth at first, becoming exserted to 20mm.

Distribution

Papua New Guinea, Mt Antares, Western, Southern and Eastern Highlands.

Altitude

Habitat

In lower montane rain forest or in Castanopsis- or Nothofagus-forest, terrestrial or often on tree trunks.

Nomenclatural History

Notes

References

Argent, G. (2006) Rhododendrons of subgenus Vireya. RHS:London. Page:321