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Dipelta ventricosa Hemsl.

Modern name

Dipelta yunnanensis Franch.

A deciduous shrub up to 18 ft high; young shoots downy. Leaves oval or ovate-lanceolate, rounded at the base, the apex long and taper-pointed, edged with a few gland-tipped teeth, sometimes quite entire, 2 to 6 in. long, 34 to 134 in. wide, downy on the margins and slightly so on both surfaces; stalks 18 to 13 in. long. Flowers produced at the end and in the leaf-axils of short side shoots; usually they are solitary in the leaf-axil and in a terminal corymb of three. Corolla between tubular and pitcher-shaped, 1 to 114 in. long, and 34 in. wide at the mouth; the tube protruded on one side near the base; five-lobed, the lobes rounded, and the two upper ones the smaller; deep rose outside, paler within, except in the throat, which is orange-coloured. Calyx with five awl-shaped lobes 13 in. long, fringed with short hairs. Flower-stalk slender, and furnished with several bracts at the base of each flower. These bracts (the largest 23 in. long, 13 in. wide), are persistent and become attached to the fruit, which is also covered by the persistent calyx. Distinct from D. floribunda in the smaller, bellied corolla. Bot. Mag., t. 8294.

Native of W. China; discovered and introduced by Wilson in 1904, flowered in the Coombe Wood nursery in May 1908. It thrives very well, and makes an ornamental as well as an interesting shrub.


Dipelta ventricosa

Dipelta ventricosa

Genus

Dipelta

Other species in the genus