Spiraea gemmata Zab.

A shrub 4 to 8 ft high, with slender, arching, more or less angular stems, quite glabrous; buds slender, pointed, longer than the leaf-stalk. Leaves narrowly oblong, from 1⁄2 to 1 in. long, 1⁄8 to 1⁄3 in. wide, often entire with a short abrupt tip, but sometimes blunt and with about three teeth at the end; green and quite glabrous on both surfaces. Flowers white, small, produced during May in umbels about 1 in. across. Pedicels glabrous, slender, each furnished with a bract, which in the lower part of the inflorescence is leaf-like and inserted near the base of the pedicel, becoming progressively narrower and moving nearer to the flower in the upper part. Follicles glabrous.

Native of N.W. China. It was introduced to St Petersburg (? by Potanin from Kansu) in 1886 and the seeds distributed from there under the erroneous name “S. mongolica”, whence Koehne’s error. It is a pretty, white-flowered shrub in the style of S. nipponica, which it resembles in its bracteate inflorescence but from which it differs in its narrower, more oblong, mostly entire leaves and its long slender buds (in S. nipponica the buds are flattened-ovoid, shorter than the petiole). It is by no means so attractive a species, however, and now uncommon.