ERICACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 149 
in length, and remain on the branches two or three years. The inflorescence-buds are formed in 
summer, and at first are surrounded by several loose narrow leaf-like scales; when fully grown in 
September they are cone-like, an inch and a half long, half an inch broad, and covered with many 
imbricated ovate bracts rounded and contracted at the apex into long slender points; they begin 
to open late in June, after the shoots of the year, which develop immediately below the inflorescence- 
buds from buds in the axils of upper leaves, have reached their full length. The flowers are produced 
in sixteen to twenty-four-flowered umbellate clusters four or five inches in diameter, and are borne on 
slender pink pedicels ; these are covered with glandular white hairs, furnished at the base with two 
linear scarious bractlets, and are developed from the axils of the bracts of the inner ranks of the 
inflorescence-buds. As the flower-buds open, the bracts gradually fall; they are accrescent, scarious, 
very resinous, and puberulous, especially on the outer surface near the base; when fully grown, those 
of the outer ranks are an inch long and one third of an inch broad, and in falling mark the base of the 
stem of the inflorescence with many conspicuous ring-like scars; those of the inner ranks are an inch 
and a half long, a quarter of an inch wide, lanceolate, and contracted into long slender points. The 
calyx is light green and puberulous, with rounded rather remote lobes, and in the bud does not entirely 
inclose the corolla, which is campanulate, gibbous on the posterior side, puberulous in the throat, light 
rose-color,’ purplish,’ or white,* an inch in length, cleft to the middle into oval rounded lobes with 
conspicuous central veins ; the upper lobe is marked on the inner face by a cluster of yellow-green spots ; 
and on the outer surface at the bottom of each sinus there is a conspicuous dark red gland ; before 
anthesis the corolla is prominently five-angled or ridged, white below and marked above with five pink 
bands corresponding with the lobes. The stamens vary from eight to twelve in number; they are 
proterandrous, white, inserted on the bright green disk, and vary in length from the anterior to the 
posterior part of the flower ; the filaments are enlarged and flattened at the base, slightly bent mward 
above the middle, and bearded with stiff white hairs, the four or five shorter ones at the back of the 
flower for more than half their length and the longer ones only near the base. The ovary is ovate, 
green, coated with short glandular pale hairs, and crowned with a long slender glabrous white declining 
style, which is club-shaped and inflexed at the apex, and terminates in a five-rayed scarlet stigma. The 
capsule is dark red-brown, ovate, half an inch im length, glandular-hispid, surrounded at the base by 
the persistent calyx, and crowned with the style; it has papery walls, and the thin endocarp is separable 
from the light brown slightly thinner exocarp; it ripens and sheds its seed in the autumn, although the 
clusters of open capsules remain on the branches until the following summer. The seed is oblong, 
flattened, and covered with a loose coat prolonged at both ends into scarious fringed appendages. 
Rhododendron maximum is distributed from Nova Scotia to the northern shores of Lake Erie in 
the province of Ontario,‘ and southward through New York and New England and along the Alleghany 
Mountains to northern Georgia. At the north it is rare, inhabiting deep cold swamps in a few isolated 
situations; on the mountains of western Pennsylvania it is more abundant, and farther south becomes 
exceedingly common, occupying the steep rocky banks of streams to an elevation of about three 
thousand feet above the sea, and reaching its greatest size on the lower slopes of the high mountains 
of Tennessee and the Carolinas, where it often forms thickets hundreds of acres in extent, impassable to 
man, and the secure retreat of the bear, the fox, and the wild-cat. 
The wood of Rhododendron maximuin is heavy, hard, strong, although rather brittle, and close- 
grained; it contains numerous thin medullary rays, and is ight clear brown, with thin lighter colored 
1 Rhododendron maximum, var. roseum, Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 297 8 Rhododendron maximum, var. album, Pursh, 1. c. (1814). — Elli- 
(1814). — Elliott, Sk. i. 484. ott, I. c. 484. 
2 Rhododendron maximum, var. purpureum, Pursh, l. c. (1814). — Rhododendron Purshii, Don, l. c. (1834). — Loudon, J. c. 1135. — 
Elliott, J. c. Dietrich, J. c. 
Rhododendron purpureum, Don, Gen. Syst. iii. 843 (1834). — 4 Brunet, Cat. Vég. Lig. Can. 40.— Lawson, Proc. §° Trans. Nova 
Loudon, Ard. Brit. ii. 1134. — Dietrich, Sgn. ii. 1404. Scotia Inst. Nat. Sci. iv. pt. ii. 172. — Macoun, Cat. Can. Pl. i. 302. 
