RHODODENDRONS 29 



So the forest is not so dense. Frequently in its 

 place social grasses clothe the mountain-sides ; and 

 yellow violets, primulas, anemones, delphiniums, 

 currants, and saxifrages remind us of regions more 

 akin to our own. 



Now, too, we have reached the habitat of the 

 rhododendrons, which are so peculiarly a glory of 

 Sikkim, and it is worth while to pause and take 

 special note of them. Out of the thirty species 

 which are found in Sikkim, all the most beautiful 

 have been introduced chiefly by Sir Joseph 

 Hooker into England, and are grown in many 

 parks and gardens as well as at Kew. So English 

 people can form some idea of what the flowering 

 trees of the Sikkim Forest are like. But they must 

 multiply by many times the few specimens they see 

 in an English park or hot-house, and must realise 

 that as cowslips are in a grassy meadow, so are these 

 rhododendron trees in the Sikkim Forest. Red, 

 mauve, white, or yellow, they grow as great flowers 

 among the green giants of the forest and brighten 

 it with colour. The separate blossoms of a rhodo- 

 dendron tree cannot compare in beauty with the 

 individual orchid. There is in them neither the deep 

 richness of colour nor wonder of form nor sense of 

 deeply matured excellence. The claim of the rhodo- 

 dendron to favour is rather in the collective quantity 

 and mass of flowers so that by sheer weight of num- 

 bers it can produce its effect of colour. In some 

 of the upper valleys the mountain slopes are clothed 

 in a deep green mantle glowing with bells of scarlet, 

 white, or yellow. 



Perhaps the most splendid of these rhodo- 



