Menziesia purpurea Maxim.

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Menziesia purpurea' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/menziesia/menziesia-purpurea/). Accessed 2024-03-29.

Glossary

calyx
(pl. calyces) Outer whorl of the perianth. Composed of several sepals.
corolla
The inner whorl of the perianth. Composed of free or united petals often showy.
ovary
Lowest part of the carpel containing the ovules; later developing into the fruit.
apex
(pl. apices) Tip. apical At the apex.
ciliate
Fringed with long hairs.
corolla
The inner whorl of the perianth. Composed of free or united petals often showy.
glabrous
Lacking hairs smooth. glabrescent Becoming hairless.
glandular
Bearing glands.
midrib
midveinCentral and principal vein in a leaf.
mucro
Short straight point. mucronate Bearing a mucro.
ovary
Lowest part of the carpel containing the ovules; later developing into the fruit.
ovate
Egg-shaped; broadest towards the stem.
umbel
Inflorescence in which pedicels all arise from same point on peduncle. May be flat-topped (as in e.g. Umbelliferae) to spherical (as in e.g. Araliaceae). umbellate In form of umbel.

References

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Menziesia purpurea' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/menziesia/menziesia-purpurea/). Accessed 2024-03-29.

A deciduous shrub said to be up to 8 ft high, with glabrous, slender shoots often produced in tiers of three or four. Leaves oval to obovate, tapered at the base, the apex rounded except for a minute tip (mucro), 1 to 112 in. long, 12 to 78 in. wide, with scattered bristles above and some on the midrib beneath; stalk 316in. or less long. Flowers nodding, produced in May and June at the end of the previous year’s twigs in umbel-like clusters of four to eight. Corolla red, bell-shaped, 12 in. long, 14 in. wide, with four shallow, minutely ciliate lobes. Stamens very hairy, in number twice as many as the corolla-lobes. Calyx four- or five-lobed; lobes ovate-oblong, 16 in. long, glandular-ciliate. Flower-stalk 12 to 34 in. long, very slender, glandular-bristly. Ovary with eglandular hairs.

Native of Japan, where, according to Ohwi, it is confined to the Island of Kyushu; named in 1867 by Maximowicz; introduced about 1914. It is the prettiest and brightest coloured of the menziesias, distinguished from all the preceding species by its bell-shaped, bright red corolla, whose lobes are edged with minute hairs, and its round-ended mucronate leaves. But most of the plants distributed as M. purpurea are M. ciliicalyx var. purpurea.

The characters by which Ohwi (Flora of Japan (1965), p. 695–696) distinguishes this species from M. ciliicalyx are: ovary with eglandular hairs; corolla-lobes four, glandular-ciliate. A further distinction appears to be that in M. purpurea the corollas (as shown in Maximowicz’s Rhododendreae Asiae Orientalis, Plate 1) are not at all constricted at the mouth as they are, though slightly, in M. ciliicalyx; they are also, according to Maximowicz’s original description, ‘thinly membranaceous’ in texture.