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.

Weigela coraeensis Thunb.

Modern name

Weigela coraeensis Thunb.

Synonyms

Diervilla coraeensis (Thunb.) DC.; W. grandiflora (S. & Z.) K. Koch; Diervilla grandiflora Sieb. & Zucc.;

A deciduous shrub, 6 to 12 ft high; young branchlets glabrous. Leaves 3 to 5 in. long, 2 to 3 in. wide, oval or obovate, with a long, abrupt point, nearly or quite glabrous above, hairy on the midrib and chief veins below; stalks 14 to 34 in. long, bristly. Flowers produced during June in sessile corymbs usually of threes, terminating short lateral twigs. Corolla bell-shaped, abruptly narrowed near the base, 1 to 114 in. long, 34 in. across at the five-lobed mouth, not downy, pale rose at first, changing to carmine. Calyx with five narrow, linear lobes 13 in. long; ovary glabrous.

Native of Japan, but not of Korea, as the specific epithet implies. A very handsome, free-flowering shrub, introduced to Europe about the middle of the 19th century, and the parent of many modern garden hybrids. Its distinguishing characters from D. florida are the linear calyx-lobes, reaching to the base, the longer-stalked leaves, and the glabrous ovary.

cv. ‘Alba’. – Flowers greenish yellow, aging to pink. A remarkable plant, possibly a hybrid (Diervilla grandiflora alba Dipp.; D. g. var. arborea Rehd.).

W. amabilis (Carr.) Planch. Diervilla amabilis Carr. – Although considered by Rehder to be synonymous with W. coraeensis, it is possible that the plant in Van Houtte’s nursery, described by Planchon in 1853 as W. amabilis, was in fact a hybrid. Certainly the plant sent under this name by Van Houtte to Vilmorin was not pure W. coraeensis, judging from a specimen collected from it in 1861 and preserved in the Kew Herbarium, the undersides of the leaves and the inflorescence being much hairier than is normal in that species. A weigela imported into this country from the continent under the name W. ‘Rosea’ seems to be very similar to W. amabilis, and is certainly not W. florida, of which W. rosea is a synonym. The flowers are blush coloured with deeper lilac-pink shadings, abruptly narrowed to a short tube; the veins of the leaf-undersides are hairy, as are the ovaries and the outside of the corolla; the calyx is divided to the base into narrow segments.

According to Van Houtte, W. amabilis produced variegated seedlings. It is possible that the variegated clones now in commerce under the erroneous names W. florida ‘Variegata’ and W. praecox ‘Variegata’ derive from W. amabilis. See further under W. florida.


Genus

Weigela

Other species in the genus