Chaenomeles

I've always been uncertain about how much I like the colour of this variety of chaenomeles speciosa, but have now decided that seen close up it's rather attractive. It's only just starting to flower, and most of the other buds are tightly closed for now. For some reason the leaves are paler than most of the pictures of it I've seen suggest - perhaps there's some aspect of the soil here that's doing that, or maybe it's just the fact that they're newly emerged. The flowers themselves are very pretty indeed, like little roses. It's been in the the ground for years now, but still hasn't reached its supposed final height of 1.5m and perhaps never will if the soil in this spot is really a bit unsuitable for it. Most shrubs though seem to thrive here.