148 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. ERICACES. 
RHODODENDRON MAXIMUM. 
Great Laurel. Rose Bay. 
FLOWERS in terminal umbels from cone-like inflorescence-buds of numerous imbri- 
cated caducous bracts ; corolla campanulate, rose-colored or white. Leaves lanceolate- 
oblong or lanceolate-obovate. 
Rhododendron maximum, Linnezus, Spec. 3892 (1753). — Esenbeck & Sinning, Sammi. Schinb. Gewiich. 138, t. 60.— 
Marshall, Arbust. Am. 127.— Geertner, Fruct. i. 304, t. 
63, f. 6. — Wangenheim, Nordam. Holz. 63, t. 23, f. 49. — 
Moench, Meth. 45. — Willdenow, Berl. Bawmz. 286 ; Spec. 
ii. 606; Enum. 451. — Poiret, Lam. Dict. vi. 265; IU. u. 
488, t. 364, f. 1. — Schmidt, Oestr. Bawmz. iii. 3, t. 121. — 
Nouveau Duhamel, ii. 141.— Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 
259. —Schkuhr, Handb. i. 8362. — Persoon, Syn. i. 478. — 
Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. i. 221.— Bot. Mag. xxiv. t. 951. — 
Du Mont de Courset, Bot. Cult. ed. 2, iii. 8326. — Michaux 
£. Hist. Arb. Am. iii. 144, t. 4. — Pursh, 27. Am. Sept. i. 
297. — Bigelow, Fl. Boston. 102. — Nuttall, Gen. i. 268. — 
Guimpel, Otto & Hayne, Abdidd. Holz. 137, t. 112. — Au- 
dubon, Birds, t. 103.— Don, Gen. Syst. iii. 843. — De 
Candolle, Prod. vii. 722.— Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 43. — 
Spach, Hist. Vég. ix. 503.— Torrey, Fl. N. Y. i. 437.— 
Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1404. — Darlington, Fl. Cestr. ed. 3, 
171.— Chapman, FV. 265.— Curtis, Rep. Geolog. Surv. 
N. Car. 1860, iii. 97. — Koch, Dendr. ii. 169. — Emerson, 
Trees Mass. ed. 2, ii. 435, t. — Lauche, Deutsche Dendr. 
ed. 2, 257.— Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. 42.— Sargent, 
Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 99. — Watson 
& Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 321. 
Elliott, Sk. i. 483.— Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 57.— Nees von Rhododendron procerum, Salisbury, Prodr. 287 (1796). 
A bushy tree, rarely thirty to forty feet in height, with a short crooked often prostrate trunk 
occasionally ten or twelve inches in diameter, and stout contorted branches which form a round head ; 
The bark of 
the trunk is one sixteenth of an inch thick, light red-brown, and broken on the surface into small 
thin appressed scales. 
or more often a broad shrub with many divergent twisted stems ten or twelve feet tall. 
The branchlets, when they first appear, are green tinged with red, and are 
covered with dark red or slightly ferrugineous glandular-hispid tomentum ; in their first winter they 
are dark green and glabrous; at the end of the second year they gradually turn bright red-brown, 
and ultimately are gray tinged with red, the thin bark separating on branches four or five years old 
into irregular persistent scales. The leaf-buds, which are formed at midsummer, are conical, dark 
green, axillary, or terminal on barren shoots, and are covered with many closely imbricated scales. 
The scales of the outer ranks are scarious and remain on the base of the growing shoot until it is 
nearly half-grown, and in falling mark it with numerous crowded ring-like scars. The scales of the 
inner ranks are accrescent, and are carried up on the growing shoot, which they cover until it is several 
inches long; they increase in length from the outer or lower to the inner or upper ranks, and at 
maturity are an inch and a half long, a quarter of an inch wide, and are gradually narrowed at the 
base and at the apex which terminates in a long slender point; they are light green and glabrous, 
and are closely held against the shoot by a resinous exudation from the glandular hairs which 
cover it, and in falling mark the branches with numerous conspicuous narrow remote scars which do 
not entirely disappear for three or four years. The leaves are ovate-lanceolate or obovate-lanceolate, 
acute or short-pointed at the apex, narrowly wedge-shaped, or rounded at the base, and revolute in 
vernation ; at first they are coated. with gland-tipped hairs which are pale, or ferrugineous on the 
midribs and petioles, and form a thick tomentose covering ; at maturity they are glabrous, thick, and 
coriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, usually pale or whitish on the lower, four 
to twelve inches long and an inch and a half to two inches and a half wide, with thickened shghtly 
revolute margins, broad pale midribs impressed on the upper side, and obscure reticulate veinlets ; 
they are borne on stout petioles ridged above, rounded below, and an inch or an inch and a half 
