WHITE 



MOUNTAIN LAUREL. SPOONWOOD. CALICO-BUSH. 



Kalmia latifolia. Heath Family. 



An evergreen shrub. Leaves. Oblong, pointed, shining, of a leathery 

 texture. Flowers. White or pink, in terminal clusters. Calyx. Five- 

 parted. Corolla. Marked with red, wheel-shaped, five-lobed, with ten de- 

 pressions. Stamens. Ten, each anther lodged in one of the depressions of 

 the corolla. Pistil. One. 



The shining green leaves which surround the white or rose- 

 colored flowers of the mountain laurel are familiar to all who have 

 skirted the west shore of the Hudson River, wandered across 

 the hills that lie in its vicinity, or clambered across the moun- 

 tains of Pennsylvania, where the shrub sometimes grows to a 

 height of thirty feet. Not that these localities limit its range : 

 for it abounds more or less from Canada to Florida, and far in- 

 land, especially along the mountains, whose sides are often 

 clothed with an apparent mantle of pink snow during the month 

 of June, and whose waste places are, in very truth, made to blos- 

 som like the rose at this season. 



The shrub is highly prized and carefully cultivated in Eng- 

 land. Barewood Gardens, the beautiful home of the editor of 

 the London Times, is celebrated for its fine specimens of moun- 

 tain laurel and American rhododendron. The English papers 

 advertise the approach of the flowering season, the estate is 

 thrown open to the public, and the people for miles around flock 

 to see the radiant strangers from across the water. The shrub is 

 not known there as the laurel, but by its generic title, Kalmia. ' 

 The head gardener of the place received with some incredulity . 

 my statement that in parts of America the waste hill-sides were 

 brilliant with its beauty every June. 



The ingenious contrivance of these flowers to secure cross- 

 fertilization is most interesting. The long filaments of the sta- 

 mens are arched by each anther being caught in a little pouch of 

 the corolla ; the disturbance caused by the sudden alighting of 

 an insect on the blossom, or the quick brush of a bee's wing, 

 dislodges the anthers from their niches, and the stamens spring 

 upward with such violence that the pollen is jerked from its hid- 

 ing-place in the pore of the anther-cell on to the body of the insect- 



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