96 THE AZALEAS OF THE OLD WORLD 



prov. Kiangsii, Nanking, April 23, 1914, Mary Strong Clemens (4226, 

 Herb. Bur. Sci. Manila). 



This species is abundant in eastern China, especially on the mountains of the 

 Chekiang province, and appears to have the western limits of its range on the 

 conglomerate hills a little to the east of the city of Ichang where Henry and I col- 

 lected it. The plant is evidently common in the neighborhood of Ningpo, where 

 every collector since Fortune has gathered it. It grows among coarse grasses and 

 shrubs and in thin pine-woods. It is a sturdy, sparingly branched shrub from 

 half a metre to a metre and a half high, taller than broad, and has rich golden- 

 yellow flowers produced in large trusses before the leaves unfold. In habit and 

 floral characters in general it closely resembles its Japanese relative (R. japonicum 

 Suring.), but it has a smaller and less bristly calyx, flower-stalks without or with 

 few bristles, stamens as long or longer than the corolla and winter-buds densely 

 clothed with a short, nearly white, velvety pubescence. The leaves of the two 

 species are conspicuously different. Those of the Chinese plant are densely clothed 

 on the lower surface with soft, nearly white, matted pubescence which persists 

 through the life of the leaf; the upper surface is also softly pubescent but much of 

 this disappears before autumn. In late summer and autumn the leaves appear 

 glaucous below on account of the density of the pale gray pubescence. The leaves 

 of the Chinese species are also larger, up to 15 cm. long and 5.5 cm. wide, more de- 

 cidedly oblong-lanceolate, and only occasionally broadest above the middle. Sweet's 

 figure (Brit. Flow. Gard. ser. 1, III. t. 290 [1892]) clearly shows these essential 

 characters, and if it is compared with Hegel's figure (Gartenfl. XVI. 299, t. 556 

 [1867]) of the Japanese species the two plants cannot be confused. Since the two 

 may easily be distinguished by the leaves and other characters, behave differently 

 under cultivation and grow wild in widely separated geographical areas, I consider 

 that they are best kept under separate names without discussing the vexed question 

 of what constitutes a species. 



I have not seen this Azalea in Chinese gardens but it must long ago have been 

 grown in those of Canton, Hanchow and Soochow. Loddiges received the plant 

 from China in 1823 and figured it in the Botanical Cabinet, IX. t. 885 (1824). This 

 plant in all probability was brought by some ship of the East India Company from 

 Canton. Others were introduced through the same agency during the succeeding 

 years but the species appears to have been lost, or nearly so, when it was sent to 

 the gardens of the Horticultural Society of London by Robert Fortune in 1845. 

 Fortune found it in gardens at Canton and wild on the hills near Ningpo, and in 

 his books he mentions this Azalea several times. According to Blume (Cat. Gewass. 

 Buitenz. 44 [1823]) it was introduced into gardens in Java before 1823. Of its 

 first introduction into America I can find no record, but Hovey tells us that it 

 flowered with him, and also in the garden of Mr. J. P. Gushing, Watertown, Mass., 

 in April, 1836. Later it became lost and it was not cultivated in America when 

 in January, 1908, 1 sent seeds from China to the Arnold Arboretum. Some of these 

 seeds were sent to England, where the species appears again to have been lost. In- 

 deed, in western gardens the pure species never seems to have established itself, 

 and like its Japanese relative soon got lost under a mass of hybrid and seminal 

 forms. In this Arboretum the Chinese Azalea is doubtfully hardy, but it is an ex- 

 cellent pot plant and forces well. This tenderness, which is to be expected when 

 the climate of the region in which it grows is taken into consideration, explains its 

 frequent disappearance from gardens. The habit and fine yellow flowers make it 

 a very decorative garden plant but it lacks stamina. Its great use has been in 

 hybridising, notably with the Japanese speqies, from which has sprung a race of 

 hybrids popularly known as " Mollis Azaleas," correctly X R. Kosterianum* 



