Rhododendron makinoi

Description with 27 photos. Photo: Finn Bertelsen. A medium-sized, rounded, dense, evergreen shrub. Hardy. Branchlets greyish tomentose. Petiole greyish or beige tomentose mixed with glandular hairs. Leaf blade narrow lanceolate to lanceolate, with revolute margins, coriaceous, to 16 cm. Leaf apex acute, with or without mucro. Leaf base cuneate. Leaf adaxial side dark green, at first with whitish tomentum, later glabrous. Leaf abaxial side covered by a whitish to beige, bistrate indumentum. Upper layer woolly consisting of ramiform, fine fibred (10 micrs. or less in diam.) hairs. Lower layer thin, dense, whitish. With scattered, dark glandular hairs, especially along the mid-rib. Flower bud pointed ovate, puberulent, with pointed scales. Inflorescence umbel-like with 8-11 flowers. Pedicel and calyx hairy and glandular hairy. Corolla with 5 lobes, funnel-campanulate, white tinged rose. Ovary with a dense cover of bristly hairs and glandular hairs, with 6 loculi. Stamens 10, pubescent towards base. Style glabrous, with yellowish, upwards bent stigma. Capsule densely hairy, 10-12 mm. Seeds  with well-developed floating appendages, 1.8-2.3 mm. Native habitat: Honshu, Japan according to Pearson, R., 1978, J.Am.Rho.Soc., V. 32,2.

Remarks: The rather heterogeneous specimens of the garden are based on seeds received from Japan. The seed may come from open pollinated sources in a botanical garden. The occurrence of glandular hairs on stalk, midrib etc. is alien to the species and the plants are probably better considered to be hybrids.