Euonymus frigidus
Credits
Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Euonymus frigidus' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Synonyms
- Euonymus porphyreus Loes.
Other taxa in genus
- Euonymus alatus
- Euonymus americanus
- Euonymus atropurpureus
- Euonymus cornutus
- Euonymus echinatus
- Euonymus europaeus
- Euonymus fortunei
- Euonymus grandiflorus
- Euonymus hamiltonianus
- Euonymus japonicus
- Euonymus kiautschovicus
- Euonymus latifolius
- Euonymus leiophloeus
- Euonymus lucidus
- Euonymus maackii
- Euonymus macropterus
- Euonymus myrianthus
- Euonymus nanoides
- Euonymus nanus
- Euonymus obovatus
- Euonymus oxyphyllus
- Euonymus phellomanus
- Euonymus planipes
- Euonymus sanguineus
- Euonymus semenowii
- Euonymus theifolius
- Euonymus tingens
- Euonymus vagans
- Euonymus velutinus
- Euonymus verrucosus
- Euonymus wilsonii
Editorial Note
Bean’s separate treatments of E. frigidus and the synonymous E. porphyreus are combined and adapted below.
An evergreen or semi-evergreen shrub to about 15 ft high, glabrous in all its parts. Young growths green, four-angled; buds large, pointed, to 2⁄5 in. long. Leaves opposite, oblong to lanceolate, more or less long-acuminate at the apex, up to 51⁄2 in. long, lustrous dark green, with the venation prominent on both sides; margins finely saw-toothed. Flowers borne seven to fifteen together in lax, slender-stalked cymes; petals four, greenish yellow or purple, sometimes whitish at the margin. Fruits pendulous; capsule with four wings attached near the base; seeds white, almost enclosed by the orange-red aril. Bot. Mag., n.s., t. 161.
Native of the E. Himalaya, Upper Burma and Yunnan; described in 1824 but apparently not introduced until 1931, when Kingdon Ward sent seed under his KW 10124 from the border between Burma and Assam, where it grows at around 9,000 ft altitude. The material for the figure in the Botanical Magazine was taken from plants growing at Trewithen in Cornwall, where the species is quite hardy.
Euonymus porphyreus Loes., now regarded as a synonym of E. frigidus, was described from a specimen collected by Forrest in the Lichiang range of Yunnan in 1906 and found by Wilson in the following two years in western Hupeh and western Szechwan, at altitudes of up to 10,000 ft. It is a medium-sized shrub, 5 to 15 ft high in the wild, leaves to about 31⁄2 in. long and not much over 1 in. wide, with long, slender acuminate tips and dark purple or dark red flowers. Seed collected by Roy Lancaster in western Szechwan near Kangting (Tatsien-lu) in 1981 may correspond to this form (The Plantsman, Vol. 4(1), p. 62), though the euonymuses collected by Wilson in this area were referred to E. sanguineus as varieties in Plantae Wilsonianae.