Rhododendron mucronatum G.Don

Much branched, wide-spreading shrub, 0.9-1.8(-2.5-5) m; shoots in their first year, as well as petioles and pedicels densely clothed with spreading grey to grey-brown soft hairs, mixed with few to many loosely appressed or spreading, flattened, bristle-like hairs, and occasionally with glandular hairs. Leaves partly persistent, dimorphous, spring leaves deciduous, membranous, lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, apex acute or obtuse and mucronulate, base cuneate, on both surfaces with appressed straight and soft grey to rufous hairs, 3-4.5 by 1-2.5 cm; summer leaves persistent, chartaceous, oblong-lanceolate to oblong-oblanceolate, apex obtuse to rounded and mucronate, base cuneate, recurved at margin, pubescent like the spring leaves and often glandular, 1-3.5 by 0.6-1.2 cm; petiole 2-6 mm. Floral winter buds ovoid, outer perulae with strigose hairs along the middle line, inner ones viscid. Inflorescence 1-3-flowered. Pedicels 5-20 mm. Calyx lobes lanceolate, often slightly erose or serrate, glandular-pubescent, c. 12 mm. Corolla wide-funnel-shaped, 3.5-5 cm long and wide, fragrant, pure white or white with a yellowish blotch on the upper corolla lobes in the cultivated forms (red or rose coloured in the native form), occasionally a few flowers rose or striped with rose on an odd branch also in cultivated plants, with oval or narrow-oval lobes. Stamens 10 (sometimes 8), ± as long as the corolla; filaments glabrous or subglabrous. Ovary densely setose, glandless; style glabrous, slightly exceeding the corolla. Capsule conic-ovoid, with appressed setose hairs, c. 1 cm long, shorter than the persistent calyx lobes.

It is a temperate and subtropical plant. It grows in well drained soil and open places. In Sichuan and Yunnan.

Plants can be grown from cuttings.