An evergreen shrub 3 to 5 ft high, naked and tapering to a single stem at the base, spreading at the top; branchlets and leaves glabrous. Leaves obovate, 1 to 3 in. long, 1⁄2 to 11⁄4 in. wide; stalkless, tapered to the base, more abruptly so to the pointed apex, glossy green. Flowers yellowish green, fragrant, borne during April in pairs from the axils of bracts at the base of the new shoots, the whole forming a dense mass of blossom crowned by the tips of the pushing young twigs. Perianth tube 1⁄3 in. long, slender; lobes narrow, pointed, recurved. Flower-stalk about 1⁄3 in. long, forking near the top. Bot. Mag., t. 1282.
Native of Asia Minor; cultivated in 1752. Although the flowers of this daphne have no bright colour, they are fragrant and profuse, and the shrub is a cheerful evergreen. It likes a moist, loamy, or peaty soil in a sheltered, partially shaded spot. Useful for grouping near woodland walks.
D. glomerata Lam. – This species, said to be one of the most beautiful of the daphnes, is difficult to grow and rare in cultivation. It is a low, suckering evergreen, allied to D. pontica, native of Asia Minor and the Caucasus region. Flowers very fragrant, creamy white, ageing to pink; they are borne in axillary clusters, but owing to the crowding of the leaves near the ends of the shoots, appear to be borne in dense terminal heads – hence the specific epithet glomerata. Young plants of this species are in cultivation, raised from seed collected in Turkey by Cheese and Watson (seed number 2390) and by Mathew and Tomlinson (seed number 4356). Mr Eliot Hodgkin tells us that the late A. G. Weeks cultivated this species successfully in a peat-bed.
