Colquhounia coccinea
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Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
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'Colquhounia coccinea' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
A shrub of lax, open, straggly habit, up to 8 or 10 ft high, with obscurely four-angled, downy shoots and leaves very variable in size and shape. The latter range from 2 to 8 in. in length, 1 to 5 in. in width, and from lanceolate to heart-shaped in outline; dull green and downy above, grey or even whitish beneath with a felt-like down. Flowers produced on the shoots of the current season from August onwards to October in the axils of the terminal leaves and in whorls on a spike at the end of the shoot, the whole making a slender panicle of blossom sometimes one foot long. The corolla is scarlet or orange-red, funnel-shaped, 1 in. long, downy, ending in a conspicuously two-lipped mouth; the lower and larger lip is three-lobed and yellowish inside. Calyx funnel-shaped, 1⁄2 in. long, five-toothed, grey with down like the flower-stalks. The whole plant when crushed has a pleasant apple-like scent. Bot. Mag., t. 4514; n.s., t. 115.
Native of the Himalaya, W. China and other parts of E. Asia; introduced before 1850. It is a rather variable species in such characters as the degree of denseness of the indumentum, and also in hardiness. A form with large trusses was introduced by Kingdon Ward from the Assam Himalaya in 1938. This is perhaps more tender [than C. vestita] but grows at Highdown, Sussex, on a south wall and is figured in Bot. Mag., n.s., t. 115. All the forms of Colquhounia so far introduced should live through ordinary winters if planted in some warm corner protected from north and east winds, especially if a mat can be thrown over the plant during very severe spells of cold.
'Jumbesi'
A clone derived from A. D. Schilling’s collection 2098 from Nepal. Received an Award of Merit in 1981.
'Nepalese Flame'
A particularly richly coloured clone with scarlet and yellow flowers, selected from Schilling 2458, collected at 2740 m on the Milke Danda, Nepal, in 1980. After many years of distribution under number it was named by Pan Global Plants in 2024 (Pan Global Plants 2024). It is considered to be reliably hardy in the UK, borne out by several years’ experience at the Yorkshire Arboretum, North Yorkshire, where although it has been cut to the ground by hard frost it has reappeared vigorously the following spring.