A deciduous shrub up to 9 ft high, of vigorous habit; bark bright brown, peeling off in rolls; young shoots sprinkled when quite young with tiny stellate hairs, becoming glabrous. Leaves ovate, with a long tapered point and a rounded or broadly tapered base, finely toothed, 2 to 5 in. long, 1 to 21⁄4 in. wide, green on both sides. To all appearance glabrous, they are, especially when young, really furnished with minute starry scales, only visible under the lens. Flowers crowded in a corymb or broad panicle, 2 to 3 in. across; each flower 5⁄8 in. in diameter. Petals pure white, imbricate in the bud, roundish ovate, overlapping; styles rather longer than the stamens; anthers large and conspicuously yellow, wings of the stamens toothed. Calyx-lobes broadly triangular, glabrous except for embedded starry scales.
Introduced from the Himalaya in 1830. The flowers have a charming hawthorn-like scent, and form compact, full clusters. The anthers, through their size and colour, give a yellowish tinge to the inflorescence. A distinct and fine species, the year-old branches forming large pyramidal panicles in June and later.
D. hookerana (Schneid.) Airy Shaw D. corymbosa var. hookerana Schneid. – A close ally of the preceding, differing chiefly in the leaves, of which the undersides are densely and conspicuously covered with starry scales. It ranges from Nepal to S.W. China, where Forrest collected it under F. 19646 and other numbers, while D. corymbosa, as now understood, is confined to the W. Himalaya.
The beautiful deutzia introduced by Kingdon Ward under seed-number 6393 is very near to D. hookerana, but the filaments of the stamens are not toothed. The leaves are lanceolate or elliptic-lanceolate, mostly 2 in. long, 3⁄4 in. wide, densely coated beneath with white stellate hairs. Flowers white, about 1⁄2 in. wide, in fairly dense clusters 2 to 3 in. across. Kingdon Ward collected the seeds of this deutzia in December 1924 during his journey of exploration through Tsangpo Gorge, at the eastern end of the Himalaya.