104 BALFOUR—NEW SPECIES OF RHODODENDRON. 
coating of indumentum composed of closely interwoven branched 
stalked hairs ena are more or less agglutinate and persist 
more or less until decortication. Foliage-buds unknown. 
Leaves an phere petiolate deflexed at flowering as much as 18.5 
cm. long ; lamina leathery oblanceolate as much as 16.5 cm. long 
4.5 cm. broad, apex somewhat beaked with a short apiculus 
often curved and ending in a small red hydathodal mucro, 
margin cartilaginous obscurely undulate and distantly faintly 
notched, tapered to the cuneate base; upper surface opaque 
olive-green minutely shagreened glabrous, midrib and rest of 
venation dark red, midrib deeply and narrowly grooved, primar 
veins 20 or more on each side slightly grooved ; under surface 
at first a true buff-colour afterwards paling covered all over in- 
cluding the raised midrib by a woolly persistent indumentum 
with a slightly honeycombed surface and composed of an under- 
stratum of hardly stalked rosette-hairs with many short thin 
vesicular branches and an upper luxuriant stratum of remarkable 
tree-like hairs with a thick many-celled trunk and abundant 
recurving long cylindric pointed branches from its base upwards 
which curl and take on a tendrillar form at their ends and so 
interlock ; petiole stout about 2 cm. long clad like the young 
stem. Flowers in a terminal very shortly racemose umbel of 
15 or more flowers, rhachis barely 1 cm. long glabrous or with a 
sprinkling of short floccose hairs ; bracts falling early unknown ; 
bracteoles filiform much shorter than pedicels about I cm. lon 
pilose throughout and with a white hair-crest ; pedicels strict 
slender erect crowded 2-2.5 cm. long sparingly floccose expande 
and slightly oblique under the flower. Calyx very small not 
i mm. long dark crimson fleshy glabrous with an undulate 
somewhat paler erose margin showing 5 minute teeth. Corolla 
oblique on the pedicel in the lateral flowers of the truss, funnel- 
shaped-campanulate from the base about 3.5 cm. long white 
faintly flushed rose with deep crimson basal posterior blotch 
nato plus minusve persistente vestiti. Folia triennia petiolata ad 18.5 cm. longa ; 
lamina coriacea oblanceolata ad 16.5 cm. longa 4.5 cm. lata, apice subrostrata, 
gerne tenues oes epeenn floccosi sub calyce expansi. Calyx parvus vix 
eroso-undulatus obscure 5-dentatus. 
Corolla alba maculata et. varo coccineo basali notata infun dibulari-campanulata 
. 3.5 cm. longa glabra 5-loba; lobi rotundati emarginati. mina 10 inae- 
ais corolla gynaeceoque breviora; filamenta ia asa igerege puberula. 
i Gynaeceum circ. 3 cm. longum; um elongatum tenue 
cylindricum ieancatees circ. 6.5 mm. longum pre lg ; eit validus glaber 
superans 
stamina s 
