Rhodomyrtus tomentosa

During late spring the rose myrtle turns up in bloom both inside Taipei and all through the hills around it. These photos were taken on top of Jinmian Mountain (金面山), but I've bumped into it in plenty of other places. The scent is far more delicate than the sweet osmanthus everyone knows — you have to lean in for it — but it's there, sweet and pleasant.

Up close the flower is almost cartoonish: five rounded petals like crepe paper, and then the tell — a two-tier fountain of stamens, an outer ring of yellow ones around an inner cluster of pinkish-red. Rub a leaf and you'll feel the tomentosa itself, a fine velvety down on the underside that gives the whole shrub a faint silver cast against the green hillside.

Identification

An evergreen shrub, usually 1–2 m tall, with opposite oblong leaves 4–7 cm long — dark and glossy above, densely silvery-woolly beneath. The rose-pink flowers are 2–4 cm across and carry that diagnostic two-tier stamen ring. Buds and young growth are wrapped in dense white-pink wool. Later in the season it sets a soft purple berry.

A rose that isn't

Despite the name and the look, it isn't a true rose. Rose myrtle sits in the myrtle family (Myrtaceae) — the same family as eucalyptus, clove, guava and tea tree — which is a different branch of the rosids entirely. The resemblance is real enough that the comparison isn't wrong, just not literal.

Where it grows, and what it's good for

It's native across South and East Asia, including Taiwan's low- and mid-elevation hills, where it often forms dense thickets on old pastures and disturbed slopes. Flowering peaks from April into July. The purple berry is edible and faintly sweet, and has long been used for jam and wine in southern China and Taiwan — as with any wild fruit, though, don't eat it on my say-so without checking first.