Rhododendron maximumL.

great rhododendron

WFO wfo-0001047074 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Rhododendron maximum, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. a Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / 2022-04-13 / obs. 187951986
Rhododendron maximum, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. b Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 200349031
Rhododendron maximum, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. c Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 187953288
Rhododendron maximum, photographed by Mason Heberling
fig. d Mason Heberling, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196303867
Rhododendron maximum, photographed by jfox16
fig. e jfox16, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205653894
Rhododendron maximum, photographed by Mason Heberling
fig. f Mason Heberling, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199962462
Rhododendron maximum, photographed by Zac Peterson
fig. g Zac Peterson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188194396
Rhododendron maximum, photographed by Zac Peterson
fig. h Zac Peterson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188691975

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,372 observations

Peak flowering in Jul, from 1,372 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 15 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Hymenanthes maxima (L.) H.F.Copel.
  • Rhododendron ashleyi Coker
  • Rhododendron bigener Steud.
  • Rhododendron fragrans DC.
  • Rhododendron latifolium Hoffmanns.
  • Rhododendron maximum f. album (Pursh) Fernald
  • Rhododendron maximum f. apetalum V.V.Byalt & Firsov
  • Rhododendron maximum f. maximum
  • Rhododendron maximum f. purpureum (Pursh) Fernald
  • Rhododendron maximum var. album Pursh
  • Rhododendron maximum var. purpureum Pursh
  • Rhododendron procerum Salisb.
  • Rhododendron purpureum (Pursh) G.Don
  • Rhododendron purshii G.Don
  • Rhododendron tigrinum Steud.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.