Viburnum erubescens Wall. ex DC.

This variable species is of wide distribution, from Ceylon and peninsular India to the Himalaya from Kumaon eastward and the hills of Assam; also of northern Burma and China. It is a shrub or small tree with deciduous or sub-evergreen foliage. Leaves elliptic, elliptic-ovate or oblong, acuminate, to about 4 in. long, downy or glabrous beneath, serrate, veins in five to seven pairs, prominent beneath; petioles reddish, about 1 in. long. Flowers white flushed with pink, borne around midsummer in lax, pendent panicles up to 3 or 4 in. long. Corolla with a slender tube about 3⁄8 in. long. Anthers almost sessile. Fruits black. The cultivated plants probably derive mostly from the seeds collected by Wilson in 1910 in W. Szechwan. This is a hardy form with longer panicles than normal and was referred by Rehder to his var. gracilipes. It was probably reintroduced by Forrest from Yunnan and certainly more recently by Ludlow, Sherriff and Hicks from Bhutan. V. erubescens has in common with V. henryi its usually long panicles, but differs among other characters in the long tubes of the corollas. It is really quite near to V. grandiflorum and its allies, but the flowers are borne after the leaves.