An evergreen shrub of free and elegant habit 10 ft or more high; branches arching and slender, covered with whitish felt when young. Leaves oval, tapering towards both ends, 1⁄2 to 1 in. long, about half as wide; always dull green above, covered with whitish felt beneath; stalk up to 1⁄4 in. long. Flowers 1⁄4 to 3⁄8 in. across, borne in rounded corymbs of as many as fifteen or twenty; petals white, spreading; calyx woolly. Fruits scarcely 1⁄4 in. long, dull red. Bot. Mag., t. 8594.
Native of Yunnan, China, up to 9,000 ft altitude; raised in Paris in 1888, from seed sent there by the Abbé Delavay. Introduced to Kew in 1892. The differences between this species and C. franchetii have already been alluded to under that species. It is characterised by extreme elegance of habit, and by being very woolly on young bark, flower-stalk, calyx, and under-surface of leaves.