51 
AZALEA Letitie. . 
Garden Hybrid. 
RHODODENDRON (AZALEA) Latitia. W. Herbert in litteris. 
This beautiful and fragrant hybrid was obtained, with 
others, from seed of a common Rhododendron Ponticum, im- 
pregnated in the greenhouse at Spofforth by pollen of Azalea. 
Several seedlings raised there perished, as well as others by 
the pollen of an orange Azalea, and a multitude of the stock 
of seedlings from Rhodora Camdensis, by Azalea Pontica, of 
which one of the survivors, under the name Az. Seymouri, 
was figured in this work ; and also of Rhododendron arbo- 
reum, by the variety of Azalea called mirabilis. From the 
difficulty of finding any soil in the neighbourhood that would 
suit these hybrid plants, which are delicate before they have 
acquired strength, the soil at Highclere was more con- 
genial to their gröwth, and some from this seed by Azalea 
Pontica were preserved there. I have one yellower than this, 
of which the leaves are rather more durable, and one of which 
the colour is tinged with a coppery purple. The leaves are 
rather more durable, broader and blunter, than the leaves of 
Azalea Pontica ; but in this, as in almost all hybrid plants, 
the male type greatly preponderates. It is difficult to con- 
jecture why, in expelling the purple of the female flower, the 
yellow of the male should have substituted white. The mode 
in which colours act in hybrid crosses is singular. When 
the bright yellow flower of the white turnip is crossed with 
the dull golden of the Swede, an intermediate colour is not 
obtained, but some of the mules (as to the colour of the 
flower) follow one parent, and some the others. When a blue 
Anagallis is crossed with the orange-coloured, the effect is to 
discharge the yellow from the orange, and leave the dull red 
which was combined with it, while the blue remains in abey- 
ance. It will be seen by the figure that our plant sometimes 
retains the ten stamens of the female, and that sometimes they 
are reduced to nine, or eight, or even nearer to the quota of 
