22 BALFOUR—NEW SPECIES OF RHODODENDRON. 
under stratum of rosette-hairs with few broad short thin-walled 
vesicular branches persistent beneath the upper stratum, the 
midrib thinly clad with hairs; petiole about 1 cm. long more 
or less stout wrinkled with an indumentum like the young stems 
and more or less glabrescent. Inflorescence an umbel 5-6 flowered, 
the rhachis clad with rufous floccose greasy hairs ; flower-bud 
large globose ; outermost bracts like outermost scale-leaves of 
foliage-bud, intermediate broad rounded with short apiculus and 
sericeous outside and inside as much as 1.5 cm. long 1.3 cm. 
broad shortly fringed, innermost bracts sericeous on both sur- 
faces oblong-elliptic cucullate mucronate; bracteoles linear 
about g mm. long shorter than pedicels pilose from base ; 
pedicels as much as 1.8 cm. long often less, sparingly floccose, 
the hairs rufous greasy. Calyx conspicuous red cupular fleshy 
about 2.5 mm. long 5-lobed ; lobes rounded about half length 
of calyx floccose on back and margin. Corolla bright crimson- 
rose without spots or blotch about 3 ¢m. long campanulate 
glabrous outside and inside 5-lobed ; lobes rounded somewhat 
crenulate about 1.7 cm. long 2.2 cm. broad. Stames Io unequal 
shorter than corolla ; filaments widened to base glabrous. Disk 
glabrous. Gynaeceum about same length as corolla, longer than 
stamens; ovary about 5.5 mm. long conoid truncate grooved 
densely tomentose with long ascending fasciate much-branched 
hairs ; style glabrous forming a flat expanded lip below the 
discoid prominently lobed stigma. 
W.N.-W.-Yunnan. Mekong-Salween divide. Lat. 27° 40’ N. 
Alt. 10,000 ft. In open forests. Shrub of 4-7 ft. Flowers 
bright crimson rose without markings. G. Forrest. No. 14,195. 
July 1917. 
This species resembles in its vegetative form Rh. levistratum, 
Balf. f. et Forrest (see p. 88), especially in the shape of the 
leaves, but it is a very distinct species. The conspicuous marks 
which distinguish it are: the absence of glands, the thin floccose 
indumentum of the young shoots and leaf-petioles, the rapid 
decortication of the branches, the crimson inner scale-leaves of 
the foliage-bud, the bistrate buff-coloured indumentum of which 
the upper stratum of long-stalked branched hairs forms a loose 
canopy to the lower of rosette-hairs and falls away often in older 
leaves, the few-flowered umbel, the pedicels sparingly floccose, 
the calyx with conspicuous red fleshy lobes, the glabrous corolla 
staminal filaments disk and style, the tomentose ov. 
It is one of a series of Rhododendrons that stands somewhere 
between the Lacteum series and the Roxieanum series, the precise 
limits of which we cannot define as yet. Its indumentum of 
the under-leaf surface is more complex than that of the Lacteum 
Series, ae bistrate, with the upper stratum more or less tomen- 
