An evergreen shrub up to 8 ft high in the wild; young shoots and midrib at first scurfy. Leaves oblong or narrowly ovate, sharply pointed, rounded at the base, 21⁄2 to 41⁄2 in. long, 3⁄4 to 11⁄2 in. wide, dark dullish green above, silvery grey with scurfy down beneath; stalk 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 in. long. Flowers in trusses of six to nine. Calyx deeply lobed, the five lobes ovate, blunt, 1⁄4 in. long, and, like the flower-stalks (which are about 1 in. long), very glandular. Corolla bell-shaped, 13⁄4 in. deep, rather more wide, five-lobed, pale rose with crimson spottings. Stamens downy at the base, shorter than the corolla; ovary and lower part of style densely glandular. (s. Taliense ss. Adenogynum)
Native of W. Yunnan, where it was found by Forrest on the Tali Range in 1906. It is perfectly hardy at Kew. Closely related to R. adenogynum, it is still very distinct in the pale metallic-looking under surface of the leaf.
var. aganniphoides Tagg & Forr. – Leaves longer, more lanceolate, up to 43⁄4 in. long, 13⁄4 in. wide, with a thicker indumentum. Style not glandular. Found by Forrest in the Muli region of S.W. Szechwan, and introduced by him. The truss figured in Bot. Mag., n.s., t. 531, is from a plant raised from Kingdon Ward’s seed-number 4177, collected in the same region and originally distributed as R. clementinae, a quite different species. He greatly admired the wild plants and refers to them under this erroneous name in Romance of Plant Hunting, p. 159.