Wi)e 3^t)ot!obentJrou ^ocietp ^ote^. 
to lead to confusion. Where the plant is growing in the United Kingdom in 
favourable climatic conditions it must be approaching now flowering age, and 
until it flowers a full description of it cannot be given. Here, therefore, it is 
only possible to say that the plant is characterised by a bright-green foliage 
with a buff-coloured underleaf indumentum. The terminal buds on our 
specimens are not quite of the t 5 q)e of those of other members of the series, the 
outer scale-leaves are not prominent, and there is a clustering of buds around 
the terminal one in a fashion I have not seen elsewhere in the series. WTiether 
this is only a juvenile character time will show. The cup-hairs of the upper 
stratum of indumentum are most typically those of the Falconer! Series. They 
are, however, like those of no other species, and furnish a sure mark for recognition 
and diagnosis. Delicate funnel-cups they are into the base of which the long 
thin stalk gradually expands. The wall is composed of narrow, much elongated 
cells, between which are narrow fine ridges of thicker-walled cells which run out 
from the mouth of the cup as delicate hair-branches, which by interlacing give 
the soft somewhat woolly surface to the underleaf. 
Rhododendron Hodgsoni, Hook. f. 
[Figured in Rhod. Sikkim Himal. (1849) t. XV. ; Revue Hortic. (1853) t. 22 ; 
Bot. Mag. (1866) t. 5552]. 
This familiar species is said to have been first collected by Griffith, in 1837-38, 
in Bhutan. If this be based upon the identification by Clarke in Flora of 
British Indi.a, III. (1882), 465, of the plant collected by Griffith at Tsamsu, and 
figured in plate DXXI. of Griffith’s Icones, the statement is incorrect, because 
Griffith's plant is not R. Hodgsoni, nor a member of the Falconeri Series, but 
belongs to the Grande Series. Our real knowledge of R. Hodgsoni dates from 
Hooker’s discovery of it in Sikkim, in 1848, where it is the characteristic tree 
or shrub at 10-12,000 feet elevation in all valleys. It was introduced to culti¬ 
vation by Hooker, and in our gardens it is the hardiest of the hardy. Its large 
elongated oblong blunt leaves, retaining for long on the upper surface greyish 
traces of a juvenile indumentum, and showing a grey or later pale buff-coloured 
under surface are definite features of the true species. The cup-hairs of the 
underleaf indumentum are shallow, broad and open, slightly funnel-shaped at the 
joining of cup with the relatively thin many-celled stalk, the wall of the cup 
formed of large nearly isodiametric cells, and the margin undulate with a few 
lobular projections which end each in a short fringe hair-branch. They resemble 
most the cup-hairs of R. coriaceum and R. Rex, and as in these species give 
the older leaf-surface a very evident foveolate or scurfy appearance and 
scintillate prismatic colours from the dry white membranous walls, very different 
from the woolly look impressed upon the underleaf surface in such species as 
R. ARiZELUM, R. ExiMiUM, and R. Falconeri, by the interlacing of the hair- 
branches of the cup-margin. They sometimes become agglutinate as isolated 
warts over the exposed pellicle of the under stratum of indumentum, often they dis¬ 
appear altogether from this pelhcle. The compact truss of flowers, opening darker 
and fading to a paler magenta-purple, the not large 6-10-lobed corolla with usually 
a few dark basal antipetaline small blotches, the very short 15 or more stamens 
215 
