I walk by a series of this shrub every day and at first thought it was just a small leafed rhodo or hybrid. Then I touched one of the leaves and they were sticky and very resinous/chemical/coniferous fragrant on the underside. The new growth is quite red with vibrant green leaves and if it flowered this spring it wasn't particularly showy. It's been driving me nuts.
Maybe a picture of the whole shrub would help. We can't tell if it's tall or short, upright or spreading, or even how large those leaves are. Maybe for someone who really knows it, your description would be enough to go on, but that doesn't seem to be the case so far.
Over the years I had one azalea with sticky leaves and stickier buds and flowers. The resinous tack was not from honeydew excreted from insects, and did not seem to hurt the bush. The flowers were large pale pink, rather on the cool (blue) side, and not in dense cover. Always dead-headed that one last because the spent blossoms would stick to my fingers. Anyhow, yours looks like an azalea, and the stickiness is not a contraindication. There may be many cultivars like mine (already planted on the property I bought).
I wonder if this could be Ceanothus velutinus which has leaves coated with a gummy, balsam-scented resin.
That's not a plant I know, but the photos show it having a primary and two secondary veins the length of the leaf, and serrations all around the leaf. These leaves look different from that. I haven't seen Rhododendrons (or Azaleas) with serrated leaf tips like that either. Rhododendron in Flora of China @ efloras.org says margins entire.
I will attempt obtaining a better picture tomorrow and maybe can ask one of the homeowners. It's planted throughout a small subdivision and then again in another similar development down the street so it must be a favourite of one landscaper.
So upon closer inspection, I think it most likely to be a variety of escallonia like red dream? It got towards the end of my work day that I could smell a plantation of it before I saw it. I was thinking that if it was part of a commercial landscape it would be a fairly common nursery plant, just that I haven't come across it in my meanderings before now. All through this neighbourhood they have trained it into a 4-5' hedge or used it as a dense privacy shrub. It was also planted alongside a rhodo with similar characteristics which I'll upload. The rhodo is quite intensely fragrant, even more so than the other, but I know with that one most likely that it's a pin in a haystack but I like that the planner went with both a scent and similarity combo. The last two images are of the companion rhodo.
@timberkame, thanks for solving that for us! I was going to go around the botanical garden next week looking for much larger leaves. Compare the leaf length and flower length with Escallonia descriptions for the species/cultivar if someone isn't able to tell you from the photos. As for the rhododendron, people who know them could rule out many from your photos, but probably not identify what it is. Come back when it's in bloom with a new posting in the Ericaceae (rhododendrons, arbutus, etc.) forum.
