Rhododendron album Blume

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Peter Norris, enabling the use of The Rhododendron Handbook 1998

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New article for Trees and Shrubs Online.

Recommended citation
'Rhododendron album' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/rhododendron/rhododendron-album/). Accessed 2024-03-19.

Genus

Other taxa in genus

Glossary

Credits

New article for Trees and Shrubs Online.

Recommended citation
'Rhododendron album' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/rhododendron/rhododendron-album/). Accessed 2024-03-19.

Epiphytic shrub to 1.5 m, young stems at first densely brown-scaly, later becoming pale green as the scales become translucent, sometimes smelling lightly of lemon. Leaves 7–10 × 2–3.5 cm, elliptic, the apex acute, the edge slightly revolute, the base tapering; upper surface green, at first slightly scaly with silvery scales, later glabrous the midrib very slightly impressed, the lateral veins slightly raised rather indistinct, underside with strongly raised midrib and indistinct secondary veins; at first brown-scaly with many of the scales touching, later more spaced with few scales touching, the scales almost circular, with pale margin and a small point-like brown centre. Flowers 7–16 in an umbel, semi-erect to hanging; calyx with broadly obtuse lobes 1–1.5 mm appressed to the corolla; corolla cream or pale yellow in cultivation rarely described as yellowish pinkish, campanulate, 1.7–2.5 × 1.5–2.0 cm, laxly scaly outside; stamens 10, arranged round the mouth of the flower; ovary densely scaly, style scaly in the lower half.Royal Horticultural Society (1997)

Distribution  Indonesia Java, Mts Salak and Gedeh

Habitat 1,200–1,700 m

RHS Hardiness Rating H2

Conservation status Vulnerable (VU)

Flowered in cultivation in England in 1856 and figured in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine the following year, it was lost to cultivation soon after. It has recently been reintroduced to cultivation and although delicate is not particularly showy. Royal Horticultural Society (1997)