普格杜鹃 pu ge du juan

Shrubs, ca. 2 m tall; young shoots, petioles, and pedicels with dense yellow-ferruginous-dendroid branched long hairs. Petiole 15–20 mm; leaf blade thickly leathery, obovate-elliptic to obovate-oblong, 8.5–13 × 3.5–5.5 cm; base broadly cuneate or subrounded; apex acute, mucronate; abaxial surface rufous, indumentum thickly woolly, hairs multi-branched; adaxial surface glabrous except in grooved midrib. Inflorescence umbellate, ca. 12-flowered; rachis ca. 5 mm. Pedicel stout, ca. 1.2 cm, with dense yellow-ferruginous long dendroid branched hairs; calyx lobes 5, 7–8 mm, ovate-lanceolate, densely villous and mixed with dendroid branched hairs outside, margin ciliate; corolla campanulate, pink, with few purple spots inside, 3–3.5 × ca. 3.5 cm; lobes 5, 1.3–1.5 cm; stamens 10, unequal, filaments pubescent near base; ovary ovoid, ca. 5 × 3.5 mm, densely villous; style ca. 2.7 cm, densely villous, also with a few dendroid branched hairs in lower half, stigma ± discoid. Fl. May.

Rhododendron thickets, mountain slopes; ca. 3500 m. SW Sichuan.

This species differs from the closely allied Rhododendron bureavii in the dendroid-villous branchlets, petioles, and pedicels, and in the densely villous and eglandular ovaries.