A bushy deciduous shrub 3 to 4 ft high; young shoots clothed with soft white wool, which persists to the second year, becoming darker. Leaves equally pinnate, 1 to 11⁄2 in. long, made up of four to eight pairs of leaflets, the main-stalk stiff, woody, clothed with white wool except at the spiny tip, persisting and becoming transformed into a slender naked spine the second year. On the second-year and older shoots the leaves are borne in clusters and their main-stalk does not become spiny. Leaflets oval, pointed, 1⁄4 to 3⁄8 in. long, clothed with grey silky hairs on both surfaces. Flowers solitary on a stalk 3⁄5 in. long, the corolla of the usual pea-flower shape, orange-coloured suffused with brown, about 1 in. long. Calyx tubular, with erect, awl-shaped teeth, about 1⁄2 in. long, silky. Seed-pods 3⁄4 to 1 in. long, woolly.
Native of W. China, discovered by Forrest in ‘open alpine pasture on the mountains in the north-east of the Yangtze Bend’; introduced in 1913. It is a neat-looking shrub, interesting for the whiteness of its young shoots and leaves and closely related to C. franchetiana. Like all the caraganas it should be given as sunny a spot as possible.