Rhododendron viscosum

Description with 15 photos. Photo: Finn Bertelsen. A delicately built, deciduous shrub. Stoloniferous. Young shoots strigose, green, later brownish. Petiole strigose, to 3 mm. Leaf blade obovate to oblanceolate, chartaceous, to 7 cm. Leaf apex rounded to obtuse, with mucro. Leaf base cuneate. Leaf adaxial side medium-green, glabrous, but with pubescent midrib. Leaf abaxial side, pale green, glabrous, but with strigose midrib and leaf margins. Flower bud spindle shaped. Bud scale ciliolate and with distinct mucro. Inflorescence from terminal bud, with 4-8 flowers, opening after leafing. Pedicel densely stipitate glandular hairy, with purple glands, reddish purple. Calyx with rounded lobes, puberulent and stipitate glandular hairy, c. 1 mm. Corolla with 5 lobes, tubular funnel-shaped, with long, narrow tube, on the outside stipitate glandular as above, sticky, fragrant, white tinged pink. Apex of corolla lobes acute. Ovary densely glandular hairy. Stamens 5, extending from corolla. Filaments pubescent on the lowermost 2/3, white. Style straight, pubescent towards base, longer than stamens, red purple with bullate, dark stigma. Capsule and seeds not investigated. Native habitat in the southern and eastern USA from Texas and Oklahoma in the south to Maine in the North according to (map) USDA Nat. Res. Cons. Serv. Remarks: Late flowering.