Cotoneaster nitidifolius Marquand

A deciduous, densely leafy shrub of spreading habit 5 to 8 ft high; young shoots slender, covered with pale greyish hairs, afterwards brown. Leaves ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate, slender-pointed, tapered or sometimes nearly rounded at the base; 11⁄2 to 21⁄2 in. long, 5⁄8 to 1 in. wide; pale shining green and glabrous above, sparsely downy beneath; stalk 1⁄8 in. or less long. Flowers white, 1⁄4 in. wide, four to nine in a short, terminal, cymose cluster; calyx very downy, the lobes triangular; flower-stalks short, hairy. Fruit subglobose to top-shaped, hairy at the summit, crimson, 1⁄4 in. long, containing two to four nutlets.

Native of Yunnan, China; discovered and introduced in 1924 by Forrest from open thickets by streams on the Shweli-Salween divide at altitudes of 8,000 to 9,000 ft. It is quite unlike any other cotoneaster known to me in the curiously pale glittering green of the leaves, and may at once be picked out by that character in any collection of the genus.