A shrub 4 to 8 ft high, with slender, supple branches clothed with soft hairs. Leaves ovate or oval with long, tapering points, wedge-shaped at the base, 3 or 4 in. long, and about half as wide on the long, barren, first-year shoots, considerably smaller on the lateral flowering twigs, toothed, downy on both surfaces, especially beneath. Flowers produced during June in corymbs terminating, and in the leaf-axils of. the short side twigs. Corolla funnel-shaped, 1 in. long, with five spreading lobes at the mouth, where it is 5⁄8 in. across, downy outside, of a dark, almost blood-red. Calyx 1⁄2 in. long, consisting of a tube and five narrow linear lobes, hairy. Seed-vessel cylindrical, narrow, downy.
Native of the mountains of Japan; introduced to Europe about 1860. The typical W. floribunda is now rare in cultivation, but it is the species whose characteristics and colour of flower are dominant in the crimson-flowered hybrids such as ‘Eva Rathke’ and ‘Styriaca’. It is allied to W. coraeensis, but that is an almost glabrous species, with lighter coloured flowers.