Wight
Description
Rhododendron grande is a tree species of the eastern Himalayan temperate forest belt, ranging through Nepal, Sikkim and Darjeeling in India, Bhutan, northern Myanmar and southwestern China (Yunnan, Tibet), with cultivated and naturalised records extending to Great Britain, Belgium, Canada and the United States; the GBIF dataset comprises some 284 georeferenced occurrences. It typically grows between 2000 and 3000 m in cool, humid broad-leaved and conifer forests, ravine margins and on shaded slopes, often forming an understorey component beneath Tsuga and Quercus. The photographed plant from Suketar in eastern Nepal at 2400 m, flowering in March, is characteristic of these mid-montane mist forests where high rainfall and persistent cloud cover prevail.
It is an evergreen shrub or small tree reaching 10–15 m, with stout branchlets and smooth grey-brown bark. The leaves are large, coriaceous, oblong-elliptic to oblanceolate, 15–30 cm long, dark glossy green above and conspicuously silvery to fawn lanate-tomentose beneath with a thin plastered indumentum. The inflorescence is a dense compact truss of 15–25 flowers; the corolla is campanulate, 4–5 cm long, ivory-white to creamy with a basal crimson-purple blotch, eight-lobed, and subtended by a swollen nectary. Stamens are 16, the ovary tomentose, and the fruit a woody curved capsule dehiscing to release numerous minute winged seeds.
Rhododendron grande belongs to subgenus Hymenanthes, subsection Grandia, a group of large-leaved species centred on the Sino-Himalaya and noted for their bicoloured indumentum. As one of the earliest-flowering large rhododendrons it is valued in horticulture and draws nectar-feeding birds and bumblebees. Though not globally threatened, populations face pressure from forest clearance and grazing.
Author: Wight · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 14, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of Nepal, The Genus Rhododendron (Cox & Cox)