Hydrangea paniculata Sieb.

A deciduous shrub, sometimes tree-like, and 12 to 20 ft high; young shoots at first downy, becoming glabrous. Leaves often in threes, oval or ovate, tapered at both ends, or rounded at the base, toothed; 3 to 6 in. long, 11⁄2 to 3 in. wide, with scattered, flat, bristly hairs above, and pale bristles on the veins beneath; stalk 1⁄2 to 1 in. long. Panicles pyramidal, varying in size according to the strength of the shoot, usually 6 to 8 in. long, two-thirds as wide at the base. A few of the outermost flowers sterile, 3⁄4 to 11⁄4 in. wide, white changing to purple-pink; the small fertile flowers yellowish white; flower-stalks downy.

Native of Japan, Sakhalin, and of eastern and southern China. It was introduced in 1861, but the normal wild form, in which the inflorescences are sparsely furnished with ray-flowers, has never been common in cultivation. The flowering branch figured in the Botanical Magazine is from a plant growing in Captain Collingwood Ingram’s garden at Benenden, Kent, originally collected by him as a seedling on Aso-san, a volcano in Kyushu. This specimen was received at Kew in July and it appears to be in this month and in August that it normally flowers in cultivation. The species appears to be variable in habit in the wild. Sargent saw it as a tree 25 to 30 ft high in central Hokkaido, but Siebold described it as a lax shrub up to 6 ft high. It is also variable in foliage; the leaves on the Benenden plant are glabrous and glossy above and long-acuminate at the apex – hence very different in appearance from those of the cultivars.