Appearance
The plant is an arching, spreading shrub, with light brown flaky bark and graceful arching branches, which can grow higher than 8 ft tall. It is usually as wide as it is tall. The plant blooms in late spring. Its light pink flowers, dark pink in the bud, are about one-inch long and bell-shaped ; they grow in pairs, as with all Caprifoliaceae, and form showy, numerous sprays along ripened wood. Its leaves are opposite, simple, and ovate, from 0.5 to 3 in long, entire or with a few sparse shallow teeth. Its fruit is a hairy, ovoid capsule approximately 0.25 in inches long.Evolution
The beauty bush originates in Central China, where it has been discovered for western science twice; once by the Jesuit missionary Giuseppe Giraldi in Shaanxi, and then in western Hubei province by the British explorer and plant collector E.H. Wilson. Wilson sent plant material to his sponsors Veitch Nurseries in Exeter in 1901, where the shrub flowered for the first time in 1910. The shrub became very popular in the eastern United States following World War I – almost a defining shrub in American gardens made between the World Wars. It is very rare and threatened in the wild.References:
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