Japan Flora: Deciduous shrub or small tree with red-brown scales on young branchlets; leaves elliptic, ovate to obovate-oblong, 3-10 cm. long, 2-5 cm. wide, obtuse to acute at both ends (especially at flowering time), loosely stellate-pilose while young, densely white- and brown-scaly beneath; flowers 1 or 2, usually solitary, axillary, densely white- and sparsely brown-scaly; corolla-tube con¬stricted at base, nearly as long to 15 times as long as the broadly ovate abruptly acute lobes; fruit oblong, about 1.5 cm. long, on a slender pendulous pedicel 1.5-5 cm. long. Apr.-May. Thickets and thin woods in lowlands and mountains;

Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu; common and variable; often cultivated.