[Reprinted from Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, Apri.l, 1913.] 



WILD PLANTS NEEDING PROTECTION* 

 6. "Wild Azalea" (Azalea nudiflora L.) 



With Plate CXIV 



About the end of May, when the snow-balls are in bloom and 

 the dandelions have gbne to seed, with their exquisite balls of 

 fruit standing up tall among the grasses and buttercups; when 

 the wild cherries scent the air with their bitter-sweet fragrance, 

 then the wild azaleas brighten the gloom of the woodlands with 

 their exquisite colors. In the region about New York City, it is 

 known as "wild honeysuckle" from the shape of its flowers, 

 which have a long tube filled with nectar. The flowers vary in 

 color from pale pink to deep rose-color and grow about ten in 

 a cluster at the summits of long naked branches, which usually 

 arise in clusters from the stem. These shrubs sometimes attain 

 a height of from two to six feet, and once were abundant in 

 open woodlands in Greater New York, particularly in the, Bronx 

 and on Staten Island, though on account of their showy color 

 and fragrance they are often ruthlessly broken. The flowers are 

 large with long exserted stamens and with the tube, the pistil 

 and the filaments darker-colored. The 5-parted limb of the 

 corolla is unequally lobed, the two upper divisions spreading, 

 the lowest being the broadest and overlapping the two narrower 

 lateral ones. The pedicels and tube are quite hairy as well as 

 the short green calyx. The ovary also is hairy and the style is 

 over two inches long, curved upward and terminating in a disc- 



* Illustrated by the aid of the Stokes Fund for the Preservation of Native Plants. 



79 



