OF SHRUBS, MOSTLY EVERGREEN 33 
then suddenly comes Azalea Gloria into sight, and all the 
others are forgotten. Azalea Gloria is really Rhododen- 
dron dilatatum, and it makes a solid band of colour across 
the hills below Nantai-San in the strangest way, never 
descending below or rising above a level so sharply defined 
that its bounding lines never seem to shift. A hill that 
just rises to the required height is capped by the Rhodo- 
dendron; a greater one is barred by it straight across 
the slope. 
Rhododendron dilatatum is a tall, loose shrub, with 
silver-white bark, deciduous, and blooming before the 
leaves. Only on mature plants are the flowers freely pro- 
duced. They come before the leaves, and are very large, 
of the purest and most brilliant cherry-pink, absolutely 
devoid of the brassy or magenta tones that disfigure so 
many of the Azaleas. A well-flowered specimen is the 
most beautiful sight I have ever seen in the way of a 
flowering shrub—the effect is of an innumerable crowd of 
rosy butterflies alighted, each by itself, on a naked silver 
tree—so delicately balanced are the wide trumpets, each 
on a distinct pedicel of its own. With great difficulty 
and after many failures and delays did I succeed, two 
years ago, in importing a hundred young plants of the 
Rhododendron. Of these only about half a dozen sur- 
vived, though treated with every care. Mhododendron 
dilatatum is an Alpine shrub, and the rigidity of its 
limitation proves that its requirements are definite and 
imperious. It grows in the loose spongy soil of the 
mountain woodland, and its roots love to wander through 
the cool, light mass amid the great stones beneath the 
surface, which preserve the moisture even more faithfully 
than the faithful copsewood and humus above. And I 
have little hope that, except by some rare fluke of some 
individual’s luck, or some individual plant’s persistence, 
we shall ever be able to make an easy garden plant of 
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