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Rehderodendron macrocarpum Hu

Modern name

Rehderodendron macrocarpum Hu

A small deciduous tree 20 to 30 ft high in the wild; young twigs red, sparsely hairy. Leaves alternate, oblong-ovate or oblong-lanceolate, 234 to 6 in. long, 138 to 2 in. wide, acuminate at the apex, cuneate at the base, glossy green and glabrous above, lower surface grey-green, downy on the veins, margins red-tinged and finely toothed; petioles red, about 12 in. long. Flowers borne in May in short, leafless, cymose racemes or panicles from the twigs of the previous year; pedicels 38 to 12 in. long. Calyx grey-hairy, with five triangular teeth about 18 in. long. Petals five, white, united at the base, obovate to elliptic-oblong, 12 to 58 in. long, 14 in. wide, rounded at the apex. Stamens ten, unequal, five being slightly longer than the petals, the other five, alternating with them, much longer and prominently exserted; anthers yellow. Style one, slender, glabrous. Fruits oblong or ellipsoid, 2 to 234 in. long, seven- to ten-ribbed, the outer coat at first green, becoming red on the exposed side, finally brown and woody, the inner wall thick and fibrous. Seeds one to three, cylindrical, about 2 in. long, brown when ripe.

R. macrocarpum was described in 1932 from a fruiting specimen collected on Mount Omei in W. Szechwan, at the south-west corner of the Red Basin. Here it occurs at around 6,000 ft and, so far as is known, is endemic to this one mountain, though a closely related species has been described from the Mapien area, sixty miles to the south. Professor Hu, who described R. macrocarpum, sent seeds to the Arnold Arboretum in 1934 from which plants were raised. A number of these were given to gardens in Britain, but only two survived. Of these one grows at Maidwell Hall in Northamptonshire, and the other at Tre-withen in Cornwall (further details concerning the introduction of R. macro­carpum will be found in the article by Oliver Wyatt in Gard. Chron., October 15, 1960, p. 399).

The tree at Trewithen produces fertile seeds, and is the parent of the plants now available in commerce in Britain. It measures 36 × 3 ft (1971).



From the Supplement (Vol. V)

This species is figured in Bot. Mag., n.s., t. 831. A feature not mentioned on page 523 is that the flowers are strongly lemon-scented.

Genus

Rehderodendron

Other species in the genus

[No species article available]