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Cotoneaster zabelii Schneid.

Modern name

Cotoneaster zabelii C.K.Schneid.

A deciduous shrub 6 to 9 ft high; young shoots covered with loose greyish hairs, becoming glabrous the second year, and dark brown. Leaves 12 to 112 in. long, half to two-thirds as wide; variable in shape, but usually oval or ovate, mostly blunt to rounded at the apex, but sometimes pointed, the base rounded to truncate; dark dull green above, with loose, appressed hairs, clothed beneath with yellowish-grey felt; stalk 18 in. long, felted. Flowers in clusters of four to ten, small, rose-coloured; stamens twenty; flower-stalk and calyx felted. Fruit red, roundish pear-shaped, downy, 13 in. long; nutlets two.

Native of W. Hupeh, China; introduced in 1907 by Wilson, who described it as the common cotoneaster of the thickets of W. Hupeh. It is allied to integerrimus and tomentosus; from the former it differs in its felted calyx, and from both in the more numerously flowered inflorescences.

var. miniatus Rehd. & Wils. C. miniatus (Rehd. & Wils.) Flinck & Hylmö – Fruits smaller than in the type, light orange-scarlet. It is a denser plant, and the leaves turn yellow in autumn.


Genus

Cotoneaster

Other species in the genus