Deutzia glomeruliflora Franch.

A deciduous shrub up to 6 ft high, with arching branches; shoots clothed at first with pale, starry down, then turning brown and beginning to peel. Leaves lanceolate, long and slenderly pointed, finely toothed, tapered to a usually rounded base, 11⁄2 to 3 in. long, 1⁄3 to 1 in. wide, starry-downy above, greyish and much more downy beneath with five- or six-rayed hairs; on the midrib and veins there are numerous simple hairs; stalk 1⁄12 in. or less long. Flowers 4⁄5 in. wide, white, produced in May and June in rounded clusters 11⁄2 in. high and 2 in. wide; petals oval; stamens about half as long as the petals, the stalks of the outer ones conspicuously winged. Calyx grey with starry down, the lobes awl-shaped and as long as the tube, purple. Seed-vessels urn-shaped, 3⁄16 in. wide, the remains of the four or five styles adhering at the top.

Native of W. China; first discovered by the Abbé David in W. Szechwan in 1869; introduced by Wilson in 1908. There are two great divisions of the genus Deutzia, one in which the petals in the bud state of the flower overlap each other, the second in which they do not do so. D. glomeruliflora belongs to the latter and it is distinct amongst them by reason of its softly downy leaves. It is quite hardy.