172 JOURNAL OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM (vol. vi 



Habitat: Liukiu Islands, Okinawa, sea-level to 500 in. alt., Kawanabe Islands; 



Japan, Yakushinia and southern Kyushu. 



This is a very twiggy plant well characterized by the brown villose 

 pubescence on its winter-buds, by its brown pilose shoots, pedicels and 

 ovary, by the appressed straight hairs on the leaves and by its glabrous 

 filaments. It is very free-flowering and its rosy-purple blossoms are 

 quite attractive. In mixed woods and thickets on Okinawa Island I 

 found this pleasing species to be common. I have material gathered 

 on the Kawanabe Islands by H. Ushio and when in Yakushinia in 1914 

 I found it aplenty in the Cryptomeria forests usually growing epiphytic- 

 ally. In southern Kyushu it would appear to be rare. This is the only 

 species common to Japan and the Liukiu Islands. On Okinawa it was a 

 compact though rather narrow shrub from 2-3 m. tall but on Yakushinia 

 it was often twice this height but much more sparingly branched and of 



poor habit. It was discovered about 1880 on Oshima by ])r. L. Doeder- 

 lein and on Tanegashima by Y. Tashiro for whom it was named by 

 Maximo wicz. There is no record of its Inning been introduced into 

 gardens. When dealing with the Rhododendrons of northeastern Asia 

 (in Jour. Arnold Arb. IV. 33 56 [1923] ), I overlooked this species. 



Sect. II. LEPIP1IKRUM G. Don 



KEY TO THE SPECIES 



Shoot and petiole densely bearded 14. R. Levinei 



Shoot and petiole glabrous 15. R. Kawakamii 



14. Rhododendron Levinei Merrill in Philip. Jour. Sci. Botany, xin. 

 153 (1918). 



Shrub 3-4 m. tall with rigid moderately stout branches dotted with 

 glistening chestnut-brown lepidote glands and bearded with spreading 

 rufous strigose hairs the first year, afterward glabrescent; bark thin, 

 peeling, mahogany-brown. Leaves clustered, coriaceous, elliptic to 

 elliptic-obovate, 4.5-8 cm. long, 2.5-4 em. wide, rounded, truncate, 

 emarginate, mueronulate, base rounded or slightly and abruptly nar- 

 rowed, margin slightly recurved, ciliate, upper surface reticulate, lustrous 

 dark gre< n with few scattered setose hairs most prominent on impressed 



cost a, lower surface glaueescent, densely dotted with glistening chestnut- 

 brown lepidote glands, secondary veins ascending-spreading, raised on 

 lower surface; petiole stout, 0.8-1.5 cm. long, bearded with red-brown 

 strigose hairs. Flowers unknown. Fruit ellipsoid, 2.5 cm. long, 1.5 cm. 

 wide, rostrate, lepidote, verruculose, subtended by persistent mem- 

 branous calyx with spreading or deflexed ovate obtuse lobes 0.5-0.8 

 cm. long; pedicels stout, 1-1.5 em. long, lepidote; seed 1.5 mm. long, 



oblong, immersed in pale brown membranous wing. 

 Habitat: eastern China, Kwangtung province. 



A well marked species distinguished by its strigose hairy shoots and 

 petioles and by its obtuse, often truncate, mueronulate leaves, ciliate on 

 I he margin, and by its large membranous calyx-lobes. The young 



