单花无柄杜鹃 dan hua wu bing du juan

Small shrubs; branches gray-brown, glabrous. Petiole 0–6 mm, glandular-setose; leaf blade subleathery, oblong-lanceolate, 7.5–13.5 × 2–4.5 cm; base broadly cuneate to subcordate; margin ciliate-setose; apex shortly acuminate; both surfaces glabrous at maturity except abaxially for sparsely setose; lateral veins ca. 14-paired. Inflorescence usually 1-flowered; flower buds not sticky. Pedicel ca. 1.7 cm, with brown glandular-villose hairs; calyx obsolete; lobes undulate; corolla campanulate, pink, ca. 5.5 cm; tube ca. 25 mm; lobes ca. 3 cm; stamens 10, unequal, 4.7–5.2 cm, filaments puberulent in lower third; ovary cylindric, ca. 8 mm, fulvous-puberulent; style ca. 4.7 cm. Capsule not known. Fl. Mar.

Cliffs. Guangdong.

This species was treated as a synonym of Rhododendron championiae in FRPS (57(2): 365. 1994); it may be distinguished by the usually 1-flowered inflorescence, the non-sticky buds, the shorter pedicels (ca. 5 mm), and the pink corolla. The specific epithet was misspelled “subespitatum” on p. 90 of the protologue, but was spelled correctly in the caption of the line drawing on p. 97.