Named for Carl Ludwig Sprenger, a botanist of note.

Young twigs are pale yellowish brown.

Fragrant flowers appear before leaves, erect, cup-shaped, 15 cm wide, with 12-14 tepals that are white to rosy-red.

The fruit is a cylindric aggregate of follicles 6–18 cm long.

The cultivars 'Burncoose',[2] 'Copeland Court',[3] and 'Eric Savill'[4] have all won the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.