720 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



with red during their second season and dark gray -brown the following year; or 

 more frequently shrubby. Winter-buds terminal, broadly ovate, acute, about ^' 



long, with much thickened bright chestnut-brown shining scales conspicuously white- 

 pubescent near the margins toward the apex, the lateral smaller, ovate, compressed, 

 rounded or short-pointed at the apex. Bark thin, smooth, pale gray. 



Distribution. Sandy woods in a few isolated situations in the valley of the 

 Savannah River, near Augusta, and in Burke and Bullock counties, Georgia, 



^ 2. RHODODENDRON, Maxim. 



Trees or shrubs, with scaly bark, terete branchlets, terminal buds formed in sum- 

 mer, and fibrous roots. Leaves usually clustered at the ends of the branches, revo- 

 lute and entire on the margin. Flowers in terminal umbellate corymbs from buds 

 with numerous caducous scales ; calyx 5-parted or toothed, persistent under the 

 fruit; corolla 5-cleft, deciduous; stamens more or less unequal, ultimately spread- 

 ing; filaments subulate-filiform, pilose at the base; disk thick and fleshy, crenately 

 lobed; ovary o-celled; style slender, crowned with a capitate stigma and persistent 

 on the fruit; ovules numerous in each cell, attached in many series to an axile 

 2-lipped placenta projected from the inner angle of the cell, anatropous. Fruit a 

 woody septicidal many-seeded capsule. Seed scobiform; seed-coat loose, reticulate, 

 produced at the ends beyond the nucleus into short often laciniate appendages; 

 embryo minute, cylindrical, axile in fleshy albumen; cotyledons oblong, shorter 

 than the radicle turned toward the hilum. 



Rhododendron (including Azalea) with more than two hundred species abounds 

 in western Thibet and on the Himalayas, southwestern China, the Malay Peninsula 

 and Archipelago, New Guinea, northern China and Corea, Japan, the mountains of 

 central Asia, and in eastern and western North America. Of the seventeen or eigh- 

 teen North American species one only is arborescent. 



Rhododendron possesses astringent narcotic properties. It produces hard close- 

 grained compact wood sometimes used in turnery and for fuel. Many of the species 

 are cultivated in gardens for the beauty of their large and conspicuous flowers. 



The generic name is from p65ov and SevSpov, the Rose-tree. 



