The
leaves are 5–15 cm long, ovate-oblong with an acuminate tip, and with a serrated margin.
The
flowers are 2–4 cm long, with a five-lobed white, pink, or red (rarely yellow)
corolla, produced in small
corymbs of several together in early summer.
The
fruit is a dry capsule containing numerous small winged
seeds.
The first species to be collected for Western gardens, Weigela florida, distributed in North China, Korea and Manchuria, was found by
Robert Fortune and imported to England in 1845.[4] Following the opening of Japan to Westerners, several Weigela species and garden versions were discovered by European plant-hunters in the 1850s and 1860s, though they were already well known in Japan.[6]
The British Weigela national collection is held at
Sheffield Botanical Gardens; along with the national collection of the closely related genus Diervilla.[4] The German Weigela national collection, Sichtungsgarten Weigela, is in
Buckow, Märkische Schweiz.[7]
'Pink Princess' is a popular cultivar of Weigela, a shrub native to northern China, Korea, and Japan, that flowers profusely. It is a hardy plant, easy to grow and maintain. It grows to a height and width of up to 1.5–1.8 m (5–6 ft) in appropriate conditions, and is thus more compact than the normal Weigela florida, which makes it a more versatile shrub. It is attractive to
hummingbirds and bees.[14]
Gallery
References
^The genus Weigela and the type W. japonica were originally described and published in Kongl. Vetenskaps Academiens Nya Handlingar 1: 137, pl. 5. 1780[1781].
"Name - !Weigela Thunb". Tropicos.
Saint Louis, Missouri:
Missouri Botanical Garden. Retrieved December 2, 2012. Type Specimens: T: Weigela japonica Thunb.
^Angiosperm Fruits and Seeds from the Middle Miocene of Jutland (Denmark) by
Else Marie Friis, The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters 24:3, 1985
^Mark Nesbitt, The Cultural History of Plants, 2005:284; Ran Levy-Yamamori, Ran Levy, Gerard Taaffe, Garden plants of Japan, 2004, s.v. "Weigela hortensis"