A modern reference to temperate woody plants, including updated content from this site and much new material, can be found at Trees and Shrubs Online.

Daphne giraldii Nitsche

Modern name

Daphne giraldii Nitsche

A deciduous shrub up to 212 ft high, of bushy growth, free from down in all its parts. Leaves stalkless, oblanceolate, blunt or pointed, with a minute tip, tapered at the base, 112 to 3 in. long, 14 to 58 in. wide. Flowers rather fragrant, golden yellow, produced during May in clusters terminating leafy young shoots, four to eight in a cluster. The flower has a tubular base 14 to 13 in. long, dividing at the top into four spreading lobes each 16 in. long; quite glabrous and scarcely stalked. Fruit egg-shaped, 14 in. wide, red. Bot. Mag., t. 8732.

Native of N. Shensi and Kansu, China; discovered by Père Giraldi in the former province in 1894; introduced from Kansu by W. Purdom in 1911. It is a beautiful daphne especially to be prized for its yellow flowers. (D. aurantiaca, also with rich yellow flowers, is very distinct from it in its evergreen much smaller foliage.) It was first raised from Purdom’s seeds in Veitch’s Coombe Wood nursery and first flowered in this country by Lord Wakehurst, in Sussex, in 1916, by which date it was 212 ft high and 4 ft wide. It is quite hardy but difficult to cultivate successfully.


Genus

Daphne

Other species in the genus