Callicarpa mollis Sieb. & Zucc.

A deciduous shrub 8 ft or more high, of erect habit; young shoots herbaceous, very thickly covered with down which persists until the following year. Leaves oval-lanceolate, slenderly pointed, rounded or tapered at the base, toothed; 2 to 41⁄2 in. long, 5⁄8 to 13⁄4 in. wide; dull green and downy above, grey with thick, starry down beneath; stalk 1⁄4 to 3⁄8 in. long. Flowers produced in the leaf-axils of the current season’s growth in cymose clusters 1⁄2 to 1 in. wide on a main stalk 1⁄4 to 3⁄8 in. long; corolla 3⁄16 in. wide, four-lobed, light purplish rose; calyx 1⁄8 in. long with four awl-shaped lobes and, like the flower-stalk and the outside of the corolla, densely downy. Fruit globose, dullish violet-purple, 3⁄16 in. wide.

Native of Japan and the Korean Archipelago. It was found by Richard Oldham, the Kew collector, in the latter habitat in 1861–3 and seeds were possibly sent home by him at the same time, as it is known to have been in cultivation a few years later. It is well distinguished by the dense covering of nearly all its parts with starry down. In a sheltered spot at Kew it is 8 ft high, but it is not so hardy or so handsome a shrub as C. bodinieri.