ERICACE^ 



723 



exserted, crowned with a capitate stigma; ovules numerous in each cell, inserted on 

 a 2-lipped placenta, pendulous or spreading from near the top of the thin columella, 

 few-ranked, anatropous. Fruit a septicidal woody many-seeded globose slightly 

 5-lobed 5-celled capsule, tardily septicidally 5-valved, the valves crustaceous, ulti- 

 mately opening down the middle by a narrow slit and separating from the persistent 

 placenta-bearing axis. Seeds oblong or subglobose, minute; seed-coat crustaceous or 

 membranaceous; embryo in fleshy albumen, terete, near the hilum; radicle erect, 

 rather shorter than the oblong cotyledons. 



Kalmia with five or six species is North American and Cuban, one species occa- 

 sionally becoming under favorable conditions a small tree. 



The generic name is in honor of the Swedish traveler and botanist, Peter Kalm 

 (1715-1779). 



1. Kalmia latifolia, L. Laurel. Mountain Laurel. 



Leaves sometimes in pairs or in 3's, conduplicate in the bud, each leaf in the 

 bud inclosed by the one immediately below it, oblong or elliptical-lanceolate, acute 



or rounded and tipped at the apex with callous points, and gradually narrowed at the 

 base, when they unfold slightly tinged with pink and covered with glandular white 

 hairs, and at maturity thick and rigid, dark rather dull green above, light yellow- 

 green below, 3'-4' long, I'-l^' wide, with broad yellow midribs and obscure immersed 

 veins, beginning to fall during their second summer; their petioles stout, terete or 

 slightly flattened, about f long. Flo-wers: inflorescence-buds appearing in the 

 autumn from the axils of upper leaves, beginning to lengthen with the first warm 

 days of spring and usually developing 2 or several lateral branches, the whole form- 

 ing a compound many-flowered corymb of numerous crowded fascicles more or less 

 covered with dark scurfy scales, 4'-5' in diameter, and overtopped at the flowering 

 time by the leafy branches of the year; flowers nearly 1' in diameter, opening in 

 May and June on long slender red or green pedicels covered with glandular hairs, 

 and furnished at the base with 2 minute acute bractlets developed from the axils of 

 acute persistent bracts sometimes ^' long; calyx divided nearly to the base into 

 narrow acute thin green lobes; corolla white, rose-color, or pink, viscid-pubescent, 

 marked on the inner surface with a waving dark rose-colored line and with delicate 

 purple penciling above the sacs. Fruit ripening in September, crowned with the 



