It has perhaps been scarcely long enough in cultivation 
for its full value as a garden shrub to be shown, but as 
yet it has hardly established a claim to equal in beauty 
the Japanese and Chinese species which form so charming 
a feature during the opening months of the year, for it 
has not flowered so abundantly as they habitually do, 
nor are the petals in the American plant of so bright a 
yellow. It thrives vigorously in loamy soil, and up to 
the present has been propagated by grafting on BP 
virginiana. 
DescripTion.—Shrub, up to 6 ft. high, deciduous, 
spreading by means of stolons; twigs brown, clothed at 
first with a brown stellate pubescence which partially 
persists over the winter. Leaves obovate to elliptic, 
irregularly coarsely crenate, apex blunt or acute, base 
cuneate to obliquely truncate; glabrous above or with 
stellate hairs on the nerves; beneath usually slightly 
glaucous, the nerves more closely stellate hairy, especially 
when young; 2-4 in, long, 1-3 in. wide; petiole stellate- 
hairy, &-¢ in. long. Flowers in axillary clusters of 3-4, 
opening during December and January, on stout curved 
peduncles 1 in. long, which are clothed with a reddish- 
brown pubescence. Calyx 4-lobed; lobes roundish or 
. ovate, } in. long, dark-red within, margin ciliate, outside 
pubescent. Petals 4, yellow, } in. long, bent and wavy. 
Fruit a woody, 2-valved capsule, } in. long. Seeds dark- 
brown or almost black. 
Fig. 1, a leaf-bud; 2, a flower; 3, the same ; 
i, 3 2, : 8, petals removed ; 4 and 5, anthers ; 
6, staminodes ; 7, vertical section of an ovary :—all enlarged. 
