453 The Azalea and its Varieties. 



like so many weeds, while in ordinary soil it is not only a 

 rare thing to see one, but it is difficult to get them up even 

 when sown. The natural situation for this family seems to 

 have been the ordinary reclaimed or dried bogs, where the 

 earth is one close mass of half-decayed vegetables and their 

 roots ; and if one could judge from the plan of culture which 

 succeeds best, we should be inclined to fancy that the roots 

 had not far to go for actual water ; for certain it is, that when 

 it is making its growth it does require a good deal of moisture. 

 The peat earth of our commons, such as the Avhole family of 

 erica are grown in, agrees with the azalea well ; and in every 

 place where we have observed the plant really flourishing, it 

 has been in a natural turfy peat, or ground made up of that 

 peculiar soil. 



The azalea is a deciduous plant, which may be called 

 hard-wooded, for all the shoots of the summer in a healthy 

 plant ripen into wood as hard as that of a gooseberry or 

 currant tree, and bloom buds set at the end of every branch. 

 The hardest of our ordinary frosts takes no effect upon the 

 incipient flowers, though seemingly so much exposed all the 

 winter. 



The species of azalea from America were always in great 

 repute ; but seedlings raised from these have far excelled the 

 originals in beauty and variety. The Belgian nurserymen 

 have produced some of the best of these improved ones. 

 The great fault of the originals, or, at least, many of them, 

 was, that the flowers were small, the divisions of their corol- 

 las narrow, and therefore there was a comparative meanness 

 in their general appearance. Some of the improved varieties 

 have very large flowers, with broad segments, and are alto- 

 gether as imposing as the others were mean and common- 

 place. There appears to be a family link between the purple 

 rhododendron and the yellow azalea ; for the late Dean of 

 Manchester and others have succeeded in breeding complete 

 crosses or hybrid varieties, by impregnating the rhododendron 

 with the yellow azalea ; and, although it appeared a most 

 extraordinary fact, Mr. Smith, of Norbiton, produced the 

 yellow color on a perfect evergreen rhododendron, which at 



