Description
Hydrangea macrophylla was cultivated and selected for a long time in Japan and China. It was introduced in Europe in 1789-90.
It is a deciduous shrub, with a dense foliage forming a large ball reaching a height of about 1 to 2 m. The opposite leaves can grow to fifteen centimeters in length. They are simple, membranous, orbicular to elliptic and acuminate. They are generally serrate.
The inflorescence of Hydrangea macrophylla is a corymb, with all flowers places in a plane or a hemisphere or even a whole sphere in cultivated forms.
Two distinct types of flowers can be identified: central non-ornamental fertile flowers and peripheral ornamental flowers, usually described as "sterile".
A study of several cultivars showed that all the flowers were fertile but the non-ornamental flowers were pentamers while the decorative flowers were tetramers.
The four sepals of decorative flowers have colors ranging from pale pink, red fuchsia purple to blue. The non-decorative flowers have five small greenish sepals and five small petals. Flowering lasts from early summer to early winter. The fruit is a subglobose capsule.
Read more about this topic: Hydrangea Macrophylla
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The great object in life is Sensation—to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this “craving void” which drives us to gaming, to battle, to travel, to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)