Photinia prionophylla (Franch.) Schneid.

An evergreen shrub of stiff habit; young shoots covered with greyish down. Leaves of leathery texture, obovate or inclined to oval, wedge-shaped at the base, rounded or with a short point at the apex, sharply, almost spinily toothed; 11⁄2 to 3 in. long, 1 to 2 in. wide, finely downy above when quite young, becoming glabrous and dark green later, persistently downy and strongly veined beneath; stalk up to 1⁄2 in. long. Flowers white, 1⁄3 in. wide, produced in summer in flattish corymbs 2 to 3 in. across. Petals obovate, incurved; stamens about twenty with yellow anthers. Calyx-tube woolly, the short triangular lobes downy or glabrous towards their tips where there is a small gland. Fruits globose, 1⁄4 in. wide, crimson, woolly at the apex where the calyx remains. Bot. Mag., t. 9134.

Native of Yunnan, China, where it was discovered on limestone hills by the Abbé Delavay in 1888, and since collected by C. K. Schneider and Forrest, to the latter of whom we owe its introduction to cultivation. It was originally placed in the genus Eriobotrya by Franchet. It is distinguishable amongst the cultivated photinias by the sharp, often coarse toothing of the hard-textured obovate leaves. The species appears first to have flowered with E. J. P. Magor at St Tudy, Cornwall, in July 1922. It needs the protection of a wall away from the south and south-west of the country.