Buddleja fallowiana is endemic to the Yunnan

Yunnan

Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...

 province in western China, where it grows in open woodland, along forest edges and watercourses. The plant was named in 1917 by Balfour

Isaac Bayley Balfour

Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour FRS FRSE was a Scottish botanist. He was the son of John Hutton Balfour who was also a botanist.-Biography:...

 and Smith

William Wright Smith

Sir William Wright Smith FRS FRSE DèsSc FLS VMH was a Scottish botanist and horticulturalist....

 for George Fallow, a gardener at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is a scientific centre for the study of plants, their diversity and conservation, as well as a popular tourist attraction. Originally founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants, today it occupies four sites across Scotland — Edinburgh,...

 killed in Egypt during the First World War.

Description

B. fallowiana is a deciduous shrub typically growing to a height of < 4 m, of vigorous, loose habit. The young shoots are clothed with a dense white felt. The leaves are lanceolate

Leaf shape

In botany, leaf shape is characterised with the following terms :* Acicular : Slender and pointed, needle-like* Acuminate : Tapering to a long point...

, tapering to a fine point, with shallowly toothed margins. The size of the leaves varies considerably according to the vigour of the shoot, and can reach 25 cm long by 8 cm wide, the upper surfaces glabrescent

Glabrousness

Glabrousness is the technical term for an anatomically atypical lack of hair, down, or similar structures...

 and dark-green, the lower surfaces densely tomentose

Tomentum

Tomentum may refer to the following:*In botany, a covering of closely matted or fine hairs on plant leaves. *A network of minute blood vessels in the brain.* Tomentum in zoology are a short, soft pubescence...

. The inflorescences are narrow panicle

Panicle

A panicle is a compound raceme, a loose, much-branched indeterminate inflorescence with pedicellate flowers attached along the secondary branches; in other words, a branched cluster of flowers in which the branches are racemes....

s at the ends of the current year's, shoots, 20 - 35 cm long by 2.5 - 3 cm wide, comprising very fragrant densely crowded lavender

Lavender

The lavenders are a genus of 39 species of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae. An Old World genus, distributed from Macaronesia across Africa, the Mediterranean, South-West Asia, Arabia, Western Iran and South-East India...

 coloured flowers, the corollas 10 mm long. The flowers bloom in late summer and autumn.

Cultivation

Somewhat tender, B. fallowiana is best grown against a wall. However, if cut to the ground by frost, it will grow again from the base. Growth is significantly slower than that of B. davidii

Buddleja davidii

Buddleja davidii , also called summer lilac, butterfly-bush, or orange eye, is a native of Sichuan and Hubei provinces in central China and of Japan. It is widely used as an ornamental plant, and many named varieties are in cultivation. B...

, the species more closely allied to B. nivea

Buddleja nivea

Buddleja nivea is a vigorous shrub endemic to western China, evergreen in the wild, but deciduous in cultivation in the UK. The plant was discovered by Wilson in the Yangtse basin at altitudes of between 700 m and 3,600 m. Introduced to cultivation in 1901, it was named by Duthie in 1905...

.

Varieties

• Buddleja fallowiana var. alba. Considered superior to B. fallowiana by Bean
  William Jackson Bean
  William Jackson Bean was a British botanist and plantsman, who was curator of Kew Gardens from 1922 to 1929. He was responsible for some of the present collections of trees and woody plants there....
  
  , who thought it one of the most attractive of all Buddlejas.

Hybrids

B. fallowiana most famously hybridized with B. davidii to create the popular cultivar 'Lochinch'.

Suppliers

The shrub is in commerce in the UK, suppliers can be found using the RHS

Royal Horticultural Society

The Royal Horticultural Society was founded in 1804 in London, England as the Horticultural Society of London, and gained its present name in a Royal Charter granted in 1861 by Prince Albert...

'Plantfinder' http://apps.rhs.org.uk/rhsplantfinder/.