Rhododendron pendulum Hook. f.

A small evergreen shrub up to 4 ft high, sometimes epiphytic in the wild; branchlets densely coated with a brown or fawn wool. Leaves mostly oblong to elliptic, obtuse or rounded at both ends, up to 2 in. long, and 1 in. wide, almost glabrous above when mature, coated beneath with brown or fawn wool and with scattered brown scales; petiole up to 1⁄2 in. long, woolly. Flowers in twos or threes, sometimes solitary, borne in April or May. Calyx five-lobed, up to 3⁄8 in. long, hairy. Corolla rotate-campanulate, about 11⁄2 in. wide, white with a yellow throat and sometimes slightly tinged with pink, more or less scaly on the outside. Ovary woolly; style short, bent, woolly and scaly at the base. (s. Edgeworthii)

Native of the Himalaya as far west as Sikkim, where it was discovered by J. D. Hooker in 1849. It is not of much beauty, but of interest as an almost hardy member of the Edgeworthii series.