On Feb 8, 2:25 pm, Stewart Robert Hinsley
wrote:

I've gone and checked Weakley's "Flora of the Carolinas, Virginia,
Georgia, and surrounding areas". It only has two species of Leucothoe,
but they happen to be L. axillaris and L. fontanesiana. ....

Unfortunately, even with these hints I can't tell which it is - from
looking at photographs via Google I'd thought L. axillaris had the
closer

This is where trying to identify from books and/or possibly erroneous
information form the web causes a gamut of confusion. Descriptions
remain just that and you have to see and know the plant first hand to
make a judgement. Fine tuning is aided by references, but wholesale
identifications are an entirely different proposition. In this case,
the plant is quite clearly a Leucothoe - absolutely no doubt about
that without any minutiae being pored over.

I refer back to the musings about it being Stachyurus. The only
possible similarity could have been that both plants carry drooping
racemes of white flowers. After that there is no similarity
whatsoever and they cannot be confused.

L. fontanesiana has been mentioned, but that is an altogether more
vigorous and coarser plant with broader elliptic leaves more widely
arranged upon the stem. It is less dense in its growth, but an
entirely more substantial sub-shrub.

I hesitate to use my preferred description of Leucothoes as being
herbaceous perennials, but they are truly a rhizomatous perennials
with stems arising from below ground, which mature, flower and
eventually die away.

L. fontanesiana, but the latter still seems to have the lead in usage.

I think you will find that fontanesiana is the accepted correct name
and takes precedence over walteri.

I found a couple of unfiled photographs from the same garden, taken a
little later in the year.
http://www.stewart.hinsley.me.uk/Ima...ges/May091.jpg
However I think that they're from a different location in the garden,
and appear not to be the same plant - the bracts are smaller, and appear
to be persistent. They're listed in my notebook as "Gaultheria?"

Despite Leucothoe and Gaultheria being related (Gaultheria is far more
closely related to and inter-breedable with Pernettya), the two genera
are instantly distinguishable from each other and are unlikely to be
confused by anyone who has grown them.