A large robust shrub, 10 to 15 ft high, the branchlets dark olive green or brownish, but freely spotted with long, narrow, pale excrescences. Leaves 3 to 8 in. long, and about half as wide, oval or sometimes ovate or obovate, tapering at the base, dark dull green above, pale, or almost white beneath. Panicles mostly columnar, 3 to 6 in. long, one or three of which terminate the young shoots. Flowers not pleasantly scented, expanding in June. Corolla 3⁄8 in. long, scarcely as much wide across the lobes, white or slightly purple tinted. Calyx bell-shaped, very shallowly lobed. Seed-vessels 3⁄4 in. long, each half ending in a slender, almost tail-like point.
Native of the western Himalaya; long known in gardens, but not common. It is useful in flowering rather late. Closely allied to S. villosa, it is scarcely as good a shrub, and differs in its leaves being whiter beneath and downy only on the midrib, or glabrous. The seed-vessel also differs in being rather longer and in having the more attenuated apices mentioned above. S. emodi never seems to have the magnificent inflorescences characteristic of vigorous specimens of S. villosa, nor are the flowers ever so richly coloured. Series Villosae.
cv. ‘Aureo-Variegata’. – leaves broadly, irregularly, and rather effectively margined with yellow.
