Google has a sort-of-new search option that lets you upload a photo to find where it came from or what it shows. You upload your photo to a special site on Google and Google searches for photos with the same colors and shapes. Sometimes the results are way off, even funny (like a roller coaster in return for a photo of phlox), but sometimes you get an answer you'd never find otherwise. It works.
Up the street is a big rhododendron that has flowered with big flowers every year for at least the last ten years. Unusual here because our soils are neutral and rhododendrons prefer acid soil.
The owners don't know the name, I didn't know the name, but Google found the flower. I uploaded this photo, Google returned an almost identical photo, and the rhododendron turned out to be 'Fanal.' It's a cultivar from Germany, released in 1966. I have yet to find a nursery that sells it. Do you have one or know where to get one? I'm wonderingif it could be the rare rhodendron that does not need acid soil? That would be great. Plus, hardy in Z5.