SHRUBS 515 



Calyx, 5 -parted, clammy, covered with glutinous hairs. 

 Corolla, first tubular, then expanding, wheel or umbrella 

 shaped, with 10 horn-like projections on the outside, in which 

 repose the 10 anthers on white filaments. When they are 

 slightly jarred, as by a visiting insect, they spring up and fling 

 their pollen over the insect's body, which thence flies to an- 

 other flower and rubs against its pistil, thus securing cross- 

 fertilization. Capsule, 5-ceIIed, many seeded. Flowers, large, 

 showy, delightfully fragrant, in heavy corymbose heads on 

 stout peduncles from the axils of the leaves, from which also 

 one or more pairs of opposite, leafy branches spring. 



Many regard this as our most beautiful American shrub. The 

 color of the great masses of flowers varies from white to deep 

 pink. The top-shaped buds are of a still deeper color, lo-ridged, 

 the ridges meeting at the centre. In deep mountain ravines it 

 may attain the height of 20 feet ; usually it is 4 or 5 feet high. It 

 often covers acres with a close growth of luxuriant, rich foliage. 

 We should take pains in its season to visit our laurel groves, 

 where its rolls of blossoms, mixed with clumps of azalea, border 

 a lake or stream, or stray up a mountain-side. 



106. Sheep-laurel. Lambkill. Wicky. Narrow- 

 leaved Kalmia 

 K. angustifblia. — Thoreau always speaks of it as "lamb- 

 kill." He says (June 1.3th): 



" The lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to 

 discover this flower in dewy mornings. All things in the world 

 must be seen with the morning dew upon them, must be seen 

 with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes." 



And this is how he writes of the flower at evening: "How 

 beautiful the solid cylinders of the lambkill now, just before sun- 

 set—small lo-sided, rosy-crimson basins about 2 inches above 

 the recurved, drooping, dry capsules of last year!" Most peo- 

 ple would not agree with him that it is "handsomer than the 

 mountain-laurel." 



This is a low shrub, i foot or more high, with narrow, ever- 



